Dr. Dan Peer

The EurekAlert! article A Fantastic Voyage Brought to Life said

Ever since the 1966 Hollywood movie, doctors have imagined a real-life Fantastic Voyage — a medical vehicle shrunk small enough to “submarine” in and fix faulty cells in the body. Thanks to new research by Tel Aviv University scientists, that reality may be only three years away.
 
The blueprints for the submarine and a map of its proposed maiden voyage were published earlier this year in Science by Dr. Dan Peer, who now leads the Tel Aviv University team at the Department of Cell Research and Immunology. The team will build and test-run the actual “machine” in human bodies. Dr. Peer originally developed the scenario at Harvard University.
 
Made from biological materials, the real-life medical submarine’s Fantastic Voyage won’t have enough room for Raquel Welch, but the nano-sized structure will be big enough to deliver the payload: effective drugs to kill cancer cells and eradicate faulty proteins.

Dan Peer, Ph.D. is Head of the Laboratory of Nanomedicine, Department of Cell Research & Immunology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Tel Aviv University.
 
Dan’s primary research interest is selective targeting and reprogramming of leukocytes using fully degradable nanomedicines.
 
His lab is studying how to manipulate cells’ functions in order to generate novel therapeutic strategies to treat inflammatory diseases and cancers. He is combining a multidisciplinary approach including immunology, cell and molecular biology, genetics, protein engineering, material sciences, nanotechnology, and computational techniques to develop innovative therapeutics to target specific cells within the immune system. In addition, he is developing nanomedicines by designing highly selective targeting moieties and novel nanocarriers, with an ultimate goal to translate some of our findings into clinical settings.
 
Dan is particularly interested in

1. Identifying key genes responsible for pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells’ self-renewal properties.
2. Studying the role of cell cycle regulators in proliferation, migration, and cytokine production in lymphocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells during inflammatory bowel diseases and rheumatoid arthritis.
3. Developing and studying novel approaches to target cancer stem cells.
4. Harnessing siRNAs and miRNAs as novel tools for drug discovery and for therapeutic applications.

Dan coauthored Selective gene silencing in activated leukocytes by targeting siRNAs to the integrin lymphocyte function-associated antigen-1, Nanocarriers as an emerging platform for cancer therapy, Loading mitomycin C inside long circulating hyaluronan targeted nano-liposomes increases its antitumor activity in three mice tumor models, Fluoxetine Inhibits Multidrug Resistance Extrusion Pumps and Enhances Responses to Chemotherapy in Syngeneic and in Human Xenograft Mouse Tumor Models, Tumor-Targeted Hyaluronan Nanoliposomes Increase the Antitumor Activity of Liposomal Doxorubicin in Syngeneic and Human Xenograft Mouse Tumor Models, and Hyaluronan is a key component in cryoprotection and formulation of targeted unilamellar liposomes.
 
Dan earned his Ph.D. in Biophysics at Tel Aviv University in 2004.
 
Read Harvard’s Dan Peer Discusses Targeted siRNA Delivery In Vivo and TAU study: Prozac can help fight cancer.