Prof. Yardena Samuels is the Director of the Moross Integrated Cancer Center (MICC) and is the incumbent of the Knell Family Professorial Chair in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Prof. Samuels is a cancer geneticist who received her BSc from Cambridge University, UK, in 1993 and earned an MSc in immunology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1997. She completed a PhD at Imperial College, London, in 2002 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Prof Vogelstein’s laboratory at Johns Hopkins University from 2003 to 2006. She served as an Assistant Professor at NIH before joining the Weizmann Institute in 2012.
Prof Samuels’ focus involves the identification of gene mutations that play a role in the progression of cutaneous melanoma. Her aim is to delineate ideal protein target combinations in melanoma to achieve lasting disease control. Her lab was part of the TCGA workgroup that published the Genomic Classification of Cutaneous Melanoma. Her lab has developed novel methods to identify cancer neo-antigens using genetic and proteomic methods. She has further been characterizing the immune response to these neo-antigens and developed relevant mouse models to investigate the role tumor heterogeneity plays in the tumor immune response.
Prof. Samuels is the recipient of the Pezoller Foundation Award, the Youdim Family Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research, the Sergio Lombroso Award in Cancer Research, an EMBO member, and is President of the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR).