Professor Dan Peer
Vice President for Research and Development
Prof. Dan Peer is TAU Vice President for Research and Development.
Contact Information:
Email: vpr@tauex.tau.ac.il
Phone: 6408475, 6407082
Dan Peer is a Professor and the Director of the Laboratory of Precision NanoMedicine at Tel Aviv University (TAU). He is the Director of a national nanomedicine initiative project. Prof. Peer is the Chair of Tel Aviv University Cancer Biology Research Center; the biggest Cancer Center in Israel that includes 17 affiliated hospitals.
Prof. Peer’s work was among the first to demonstrate systemic delivery of RNA molecules using targeted nanocarriers to the immune system and he pioneered the use of RNA interference (RNAi) for in vivo validation of new drug targets within the immune system that has enormous implications in Cancer and inflammation. In addition, his lab was the first to show systemic, cell specific delivery of mRNA molecules.
Peer Peer and his team have done innovative and groundbreaking work in cancer, mostly in brain tumors (Glioblastoma), Ovarian Cancer, and a set of blood cancers (Mantle Cell Lymphoma, Multiple Myeloma and Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia) and in inflammaotry bowel diseases.
His work is published in premier scientific journals and he is the editor and author of several books in the field of nanomedicine. In addition, he is an associate editor of Journal of Controlled Release, and a member of the editorial boards of numerous journals including Cancer Letters and ACS Bioconjugate Chemistry. He has received more than 30 awards; among them, he was recognized by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation by their Innovator (2010) and Breakthrough (2011 – 2013) Awards for his pioneering work in inflammatory bowel diseases and by the AAAS and the Untold news breakthrough Award for his development of the Gagomers platform for cancer targeted drug delivery. In 2017, he received the 2017 Nanos Award for major contribution to the field of clinical nanomedicine in CLINAM 10th, Basal, Switzerland.
Prof. Peer has more than 120 pending and granted patents. Some of them have been licensed to several pharmaceutical companies and one is currently under registration (as a new drug in inflammatory bowel disease). In addition, based on his work, five spin-off companies were generated aiming to bring personalized medicine into clinical practice.
Prof. Peer is a past President of the Israeli Chapter of the Controlled Release Society, and a Member of the Israel Young Academy of Sciences.
Research areas
The Peer’s lab work at the interface of materials science, chemistry, molecular biology, and immunology, to discover and validate novel therapeutic targets at the molecular level, and to develop specific molecular medicines for therapeutics and disease management.
The lab is highly dynamic, multidisciplinary, and focuses on developing targeted vehicles for cell-specific delivery of novel molecular medicines (e.g. RNAi , mRNA, saRNA, DNA and novel genome editing strategies). The lab goal is to translate academic discoveries into innovative therapeutic modalities. With that in mind, Prof. Peer also founded SPARK Tel Aviv to accelerate cures via academic discoveries. Prof. Peer strives to develop the career of young students and encourage them to fulfill their ambitions and dreams.
On the assignment
The office of the Vice President for Research and Development at Tel Aviv University is in charge of advancing the research and development activities in the university, and of making the information accumulated at the university available to the scientific community. Among the challenges facing the university at this point of time, one can count: advancing and furthering research at Tel Aviv University, extending the research activities at the university, and paving the way for new research opportunities.
Further reading
