Portrait of Dan Peer

Dan Peer is a Professor and the Director of the Laboratory of Precision NanoMedicine at Tel Aviv University (TAU). He is also the Vice President for Research and Development at TAU. In 2017 he co-founded and acts as the managing director of SPARK Tel Aviv, Center for Translational Medicine. From 2016–2020 he was the chair of the TAU Cancer Biology Research Center.[1]

Peer is a scientific advisory board member in more than 15 companies and on the scientific advisory board of 20 journals. He is a past President of the Israeli Chapter of the Controlled Release Society.[2] In 2014 he was elected to the Israel Young Academy of Science.[3] In 2023 he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering.

Research work

Prof. Peer pioneered the field of active cellular targeting of RNA payloads into specific cell types. His lab was among the first to demonstrate immunomodulation through a systemic delivery of RNA-loaded targeted nanocarriers. The team also pioneered the use of RNAi to reprogram immune cells and discover new therapeutic modalities.[4] In addition, his lab was the first to show systemic, cell specific delivery of mRNA in an animal. Through this approach they have induced therapeutic gene expression of desired proteins (including novel approaches for cell specific, high efficiency therapeutic genome editing), which has implications in cancer, rare genetic diseases and infectious diseases.[5][6] Recently, the Peer lab was the first to develop a bacterial mRNA vaccine, which could provide a fast response against an aggressive bacterial infection and antibiotic resistant strains. Furthermore, the team is developing novel therapeutic strategies to treat different types of cancers using novel drug targets that they identify, cancer vaccines or by using bacterial toxins in the form of mRNA to kill tumor cells. [7]

On top of this, the Peer lab generated a very large lipid library with unique features. Some of these lipids have been licensed to several major pharmaceutical companies and are now under clinical development as carriers for siRNA, mRNA, and circRNA for different indications including cancer, infectious diseases, rare genetic diseases and inflammation. [8][9][10]

Awards

Partial list:

  • 2008 Alon fellowship for outstanding young researchers, awarded by the Israeli Ministry of Education.
  • 2010 Innovator Award in Inflammatory Bowel Disease from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation (CA, USA)[11]
  • 2013 Breakthrough Award from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation[12]
  • 2014 Innovator Award, cancer therapeutics (The inaugural Untold News Award, 2014).
  • 2014 Elected Member, Israel Young Academy.
  • 2014 Elected President, Israeli Chapter of the Controlled Release Society (2 years term).
  • 2015-2016 1st recipient of the UK-Israel Professorship.
  • 2017 Nanos Award - World Leader Award for influential contributions to the field of NanoMedicine, CLINAM, Basel, Switzerland.
  • 2020 Litwin IBD Pioneers Award, Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America.
  • 2021 Distinguished Research Award for Genome Editing, Genescript.
  • 2022 Elected President, Israeli Society of Extracellular Vesicles (one year term)
  • 2023 Elected International Member, US National Academy of Engineering.

References

  1. ↑ "Dan Peer Lab, Tel Aviv University - Prof. Dan Peer". Tel Aviv University.
  2. ↑ "Dan Peer". Controlled Release Society (CRS).
  3. ↑ "TAU professor appointed to Young Academy of Science". Tel Aviv University. 14 May 2014.
  4. ↑ "Beyin kanseri tedavisinde büyük buluş". Şalom (in Turkish).
  5. ↑ "New platform based on biology and nanotechnology carries mRNA directly to target cells". Phys.org.
  6. ↑ "TAU sets up translational medical research center". Globes (in Hebrew). 30 January 2018.
  7. ↑ Shamah, David. "Nano-bullet tech shoots down brain cancer in Tel Aviv U study". The Times of Israel.
  8. ↑ Arnold, Janice (5 March 2019). "Cannabis to treat cancer? Israeli scientist thinks so". The Canadian Jewish News.
  9. ↑ "Dan Peer: "Mi trabajo es ciencia ficción: trato de hacer realidad ideas locas "". La Nación (in Spanish). 19 August 2019.
  10. ↑ "Researchers divided on future of cannabis as a whole plant or isolated medicine". Daily Hive.
  11. ↑ "The Kenneth Rainin Foundation 2010 Innovator Awards". Kenneth Rainin Foundation.
  12. ↑ "Recipients 2013". Kenneth Rainin Foundation.
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