Named Grant:

The Lea Weinstock Research Career Development Award

About the Investigator:

Dr. Naama Geva-Zatorsky is an Assistant Professor in the Rappaport-Technion Integrated Cancer Center. She received her PhD with honors from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, for which she received the Human Frontiers and EMBO fellowships, as well as the UNESCO-L’Oréal awards. In her lab at the Technion, she is applying systems-biology, microbiology, and immunology to study the interactions of the microbiota with the human body and the ways in which we can harness their therapeutic potential for cancer.

About the Research:

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the sixth most common malignancy and a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Despite the easy access to the oral cavity, OSCC is usually diagnosed in advanced stages and prognosis is poor. The microbiota, the collection of microorganisms that live in and on our body, was recently demonstrated to have crucial effects on cancer development and on the success of cancer therapy.

The Geva-Zatorsky lab is studying the effects of the microbiota on the human body and physiology, with a major interest and emphasis on cancer. Dr. Geva-Zatorsky proposes to study the impact of the oral microbiota on cancer initiation and progression by analyzing human patients and murine models, and to characterize microbial products with potential for cancer therapeutics. These studies should identify microbiota-based diagnostic markers, as well as microbiota-based molecules for future cancer therapeutics.