Amir Orian, MD, PhD

About the Investigator:  

Prof. Amir Orian received his MD (1999), and PhD (2000) from the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. Mentored by Nobel Laureate Professor Aaron Ciechanover, he investigated mechanisms involved in ubiquitin-dependent activation of the immune system. As a post-doctoral fellow at FHCRC Seattle WA ,together with Rober Eisenman he studied the action and regulation of the Myc oncogene, which is intimately involved in cancer. In 2005 he returned to the Faculty of Medicine, Technion and was the Head of Dpt. of  cancer biology and is currently the director  of the Technion’s  integrative cancer research center (RTICC) . He is a recipient of excellence prizes including: the Clore foundation fellowship, and the Fulkes fellowship for MD/PhD. Amir was special fellow of the HFSP and Lymphomas and Leukemia Society. He is a recipient of the Alon-ISF fellowship for young scientist, and the HFSP-CDA award. He is a recipient of the Krill Award for outstanding young scientists. His laboratory enjoyed the generous support of three ICRF project grants.

About the Research:  

The Orian lab focuses on understanding fundamental mechanisms that regulates cell’s identity and cancer development and translating discoveries to diagnostic tools and future therapies:

1. “Oncoprotein stabilization in cancer”: While the ubiquitin pathway was discovered as a pathway that regulate protein degradation, the Orian Lab discovered that a ubiquitin-dependent pathway is essential for stabilization of cancer promoting genes and is active predominantly in cancer cells. The pathway is critical for tumorigenesis and confers resistance to molecular therapy. The lab study this pathway; from its biochemistry via experimental cancer systems to clinical studies, and are developing PROTAC-like degraders to eliminate the pathway’s enzymes. The lab investigate hard-to treat cancers: sarcoma and therapy resistant melanoma, using multiple experimental tools including cancer genetics, functional screens, genomics, biochemistry and cancer cell biology mouse-models of human cancer and tightly connect basic research to the clinic using patient-derived specimens and data.

More about the lab can be found at: https://orian.net.technion.ac.il.