Computational & Systems Biology Program

The Dana Pe'er Lab

Research

Dana Pe'er, PhD

Chair, Computational and Systems Biology Program, SKI; Scientific Director, Alan and Sandra Gerry Metastasis and Tumor Ecosystems Center

The Pe’er lab combines single cell technologies, genomic datasets and machine learning algorithms to address fundamental questions in biomedical science. Empowered by recent breakthrough technologies like massive parallel single cell RNA-sequencing, we ask questions such as: How do multi-cellular organisms develop from a single cell, resulting in the vast diversity of progenitor and terminal cell types? How does a cell’s regulatory circuit control the dynamics of signal processing and how do these circuits rewire over the course of development? How does an ensemble of cells function together to execute a multi-cellular response, such as an immune response to pathogen or cancer? We will also address more medically oriented questions such as: How do regulatory circuits go awry in disease? What is the consequence of intra-tumor heterogeneity? Can we characterize the tumor immune eco-system to gain a better understanding of when or why immunotherapy works or does not work? A key goal is to use this characterization of the tumor immune eco-system to personalize immunotherapy.

Featured News

“Beautiful Patterns in Biology”: How SKI’s Dana Pe’er Earned a Top Honor and Advocates for Women Scientists

Dana Pe’er was recently named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator — one of the highest honors in biomedical science. As part of that designation, she will receive approximately $9 million over a seven-year term, with opportunity for renewal.

In the Lab

Fluorescent image of mouse prostate gland

New Discovery Explains How the Prostate Gland Regenerates Itself

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Androgen-deprivation therapy, a mainstay of prostate cancer treatment, may give prostate cells new growth abilities, scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering have found.

In the Lab

In this fluorescent microscopy image of endoderm tissue from a mouse embryo, cell membranes are red, cell nuclei are blue, and extra-embryonic endoderm cells are green (they appear turquoise because blue and green are merged).

Scientists Rewrite the Textbook of Organ Development, One Cell at a Time

Monday, April 8, 2019

A large study that analyzed nearly 120,000 cells in a developing mouse embryo is full of surprises.

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Publications

The emergent landscape of the mouse gut endoderm at single-cell resolution. Nowotschin S, Setty M, Kuo YY, Liu V, Garg V, Sharma R, Simon CS, Saiz N, Gardner R, Boutet SC, Church DM, Hoodless PA, Hadjantonakis AK, Pe’er D. Nature. 2019 May;569(7756):361-367. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1127-1. Epub 2019 Apr 8. PMID: 30959515

Characterization of cell fate probabilities in single-cell data with Palantir. Setty M, Kiseliovas V, Levine J, Gayoso A, Mazutis L, Pe’er D. Nat Biotechnol. 2019 Apr;37(4):451-460. doi: 10.1038/s41587-019-0068-4. PMID: 30899105.

Single-cell map of diverse immune phenotypes in the breast tumor microenvironment. Azizi E, Carr AJ, Plitas G, Cornish AE, Konopacki C, Prabhakaran S, Nainys J, Wu K, Kiseliovas V, Setty M, Choi K, Fromme RM, Dao P, McKenney PT, Wasti RC, Kadaveru K, Mazutis L, Rudensky AY, Pe’er D. Cell. 2018 Aug 23;174(5):1293-1308.e36. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.05.060. PMID: 29961579

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People

Dana Pe'er, PhD

Chair, Computational and Systems Biology Program, SKI; Scientific Director, Alan and Sandra Gerry Metastasis and Tumor Ecosystems Center

Computational Biologist Dana Pe’er combines single cell technologies, genomic datasets and machine learning techniques to address fundamental questions addressing regulatory cell circuits, cellular development, tumor immune eco-system, genotype to phenotype relations and precision medicine.
PhD, Hebrew University, Jerusalem Israel

kornblk@mskcc.org: Email Address

Members

Joseph Chan
Instructor, Thoracic Oncology Service

Ariana Ayala-Pender
Administrative Assistant II

Ronan Chaligné
Assistant Lab Member and Director of SCRI

Jaeyoung Chun
Manager, Computational Biologist

Alejandro Jiménez-Sánchez
Postdoctoral Researcher

Simon Joost, PhD — Simon Joost
Postdoctoral Fellow; Hope Funds for Cancer Research Fellow

Ignas Masilionis
Senior Research Assistant

Roshan Sharma
Senior Computational Biologist

Lab Alumni

Maria Avdeeva
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Elham Azizi
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Ambrose Carr

Visiting Scientist

Kristy Choi

Student

Herman Gudjonson
Postdoctoral Researcher

Pooja Kathail

Student

Sanjay Kottapalli
Computational Biologist

Ashley Laughney
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Jacob Levine

Postdoctoral Fellow

Awni Mousa
Senior Bioinformatics Engineer

Zakary Plautz

Research Technician

Sandhya Prabhakaran
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Kathleen Sadowski

Senior Administrative Assistant

Riana Trowell

Administrative Assistant

David van Dijk

Postdoctoral Fellow

Lab Affiliations

Achievements

2021 Fellow - International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)
2019 Ernst W. Bertner Memorial Award - University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
2016 Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award - Columbia University
2014 Director’s Pioneer Award - National Institutes of Health
2014 Overton Prize - International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)

2012 Test of Time Award - Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB)
2010 Innovator Award - Stand Up 2 Cancer/American Academy of Cancer Research (AACR)
2009 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering - The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
2007 NIH Director's New Innovator Award - National Institutes of Health
2005 Breakthrough of the Year Runner-up - Science Magazine
2005 Career Award at the Scientific Interface - Burroughs Wellcome Fund

Lab News & Events

Upcoming event

Generating a Compendium of Cancer Genes and Driver Mutations Across Cancer Types

Friday, June 10, 2022 - 3PM

This seminar will take place by Zoom webinar.

Open Positions

To learn more about available postdoctoral opportunities, please visit our Career Center

Get in Touch

kornblk@mskcc.org

Lab Head Email
646-888-3486

Dry Lab Phone
646-888-2319

Wet Lab Phone

Disclosures

Doctors and faculty members often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community.

MSK requires doctors and faculty members to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public.

Dana Pe'er discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

Insitro, Inc.
Ownership / Equity Interests; Provision of Services

The information published here is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.

This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2020 through disclosure submission in spring 2021). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.

Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at ecoi@mskcc.org.

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