Dan Peer

Prof. Dan Peer is an Associate Professor that leads an NIH-funded lab in the Faculty of Life Science and the Faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University (TAU). He is also the Director of the Focal Technology Area (FTA) on Nanomedicines for Personalized Theranostics, a National Nanotechnology Initiative program and the Director of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Nanotechnology Research Fund. His work was among the first to demonstrate systemic delivery of RNA molecules (new class of drugs) 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.

Prof. Peer has more than 45 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, 3 spin-off companies were generated Leuko Biosciences, Quiet Therapeutics and ESPL Pharma, aiming to bring nanomedicine into clinical practice. Prof. Peer is an editorial board member in 10 journals and an editor in three journals. In addition, he is a member of the scientific advisory board of several international companies.

Dr. Peer is the President of the Israeli Chapter of the Controlled Release Society, and a Member of the Israel Young Academy of Science.

Nanomedicine is an emerging multidisciplinary field that offers unprecedented access to living cells and promises the state-of-the-art in cancer detection and treatment.  Development of nanomedicines as drug carriers (nanocarriers) that target cancer for therapy draws upon principles in the fields of chemistry, medicine, physics, biology, and engineering.  

Given the zealous activity in the field as demonstrated by more than 30 nanocarriers already approved for clinical use and given the promise of recent clinical results in various studies, nanocarrier-based strategies are anticipated to soon have a profound impact on cancer medicine and human health.  Herein, I will detail the latest innovations in therapeutic nanomedicine with examples from targeted lipid-based nanoparticles, which are engineered to deliver small interfering RNAs to inhibit specific gene in leukocytes subsets and epithelial cells.

This strategy is used as a tool to study in vivo gene expression, disease management and potentially for therapeutics. Emphasis will be placed on the latest and most attractive delivery platforms, which are developed specifically to target leukocytes in inflammatory bowel diseases, blood cancers and solid tumors such as ovarian cancer and glioma (GBM).

These novel nanomedicines may open new avenues for therapeutic intervention and ultimately might become a new therapeutic modality for treating cancer and inflammation using RNA-based drugs.