Dan Peer | IMIT 2025

Dan Peer

Professor, Faculty of Life Science

Tel Aviv University

Speech Title:

FROM MATERIALS TO CYBORG TISSUES AND OMICS –BASED PERSPNALIZED MEDICINE: THE NEW AGE OF NANOMEDICINE

Abstract:

Advances in nanoscale science and bio-nanoengineering are revolutionizing our understanding and ability to manipulate complex biological processes as well as the way health care is administered. These approaches and innovations, collectively termed as nanomedicine, are on the verge of improving disease prevention, detection, treatment and management. In my presentation, I will detail examples from the state-of-the-art in material sciences and the generation of cyborg tissues with implications to different diseases such as cancer, inflammation, cardiovascular diseases and more. Special emphasis will be made to novel approaches in personalized medicine using Omics technologies and their implications in Cancer and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) both from therapeutics and diagnostics standpoints with some current examples in theranostics of IBD.

Bio:

Prof. Dan Peer is an associate professor that leads an NIH-funded lab in the Faculty of Life Science at Tel Aviv University (TAU). He is also the director of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Nanotechnology Research Fund and the director of the Focal Technology Area (FTA) on Nanomedicines for Personalized Theranostics, a national nanotechnology initiative, which includes 12 academic labs and a grant of $11.5M that support this effort.
He was recruited to Tel Aviv University from Harvard Medical School in 2008.

Prof. Peer has been a senior affiliate member of the Research Institute of Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas since 2011 and a visiting scientist at the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts since 2008.

Prof. Dan 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. He was recruited to TAU in 2008 from Harvard to establish the laboratory of NanoMedicine . The Laboratory of NanoMedicine in Tel Aviv University, which he directs has 24 researchers, 9 of them are senior scientists (Ph.D. levels), 11 graduate students and 4 lab technicians from a variety of fields such as Biology, Chemistry, engineering, physics and medicine.

Prof. Peer generated an international recognition and collaboration in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and oncology area. He received numerous awards; among them he was recognized by the AAAS excellence in Science program for young investigators and was recently awarded the innovator (2010) and the breakthrough (2011, 2012, 2013) awards from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation on his pioneering work in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD).

His current interests include the generation of novel platforms for delivery of therapeutics and imaging payloads into specific cell types and the utilization of these nanocarriers also for in vivo discovery and validation of new drug targets. He is an editor of several books in the field of nanomedicine, editor of Molecular and cellular therapies, an associate editor of the Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology, and of Biochemistry, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Controlled Release (Elsevier), Nanotechnology (IOP) , BioMEMs and Biomedical Nanotechnology (Springer) and Cancer Letters (Elsevier). In addition, he is a guest editor of Chemistry & Physics of Lipids, Journal of Controlled Release and Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews. He has more than 40 pending and granted patents. Some of them have been licensed to several pharmaceutical companies and one is under a phase II clinical evaluation. In addition, based on his work, 2 spin-off companies were generated LeukoBiosciences in the US and Quiet Therapeutics in Israel, aiming to bring nanomedicine into clinical practice.