Yardena Samuels
Dr. Samuels received her B.Sc. from Cambridge University, UK and her M.Sc. in immunology and cancer research at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She received her Ph.D. in molecular cancer biology at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Imperial College, London. Dr. Samuels did her postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Vogelstein, Kinzler and Velculescu where she discovered that the gene encoding PI3Kalpha is mutated in 32% of colorectal cancer patients as well as in a large fraction of other human cancers, making this one of the most highly mutated oncogenes in human malignancies. As a tenure track researcher at the NIH, Dr. Samuels has established a bank of metastatic melanoma tumors and matched normal tissues in collaboration with Dr. Rosenberg, Chief of Surgery at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Samuels then uses high-throughput, whole exome and whole-genome sequencing to identify the genetic changes that underlie melanoma. Once these mutations are identified, her group focuses on characterizing the biochemical, functional, and clinical aspects of the most highly mutated genes. Dr. Samuels has recently accepted a tenured Associate Professor position at The Weizmann Institute where she is the Incumbent of the Knell Family Professorial Chair. Prof. Samuels is developing novel preclinical models to characterize driver events in melanoma and investigates ways to target them in a genotype-specific manner.
Abstracts this author is presenting: