About the Investigator:

Dr. Parnas’s research focuses on understanding how pancreatic cancer develops and how the tumor microenvironment suppresses the immune response. He received his BSc in industrial and management engineering and his MSc in economics from the Technion. Then, he started a scientific career and did his doctoral research in Martin Kupiec’s lab at Tel Aviv University. After postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, he returned to the Hebrew University where he is now an assistant professor in the Department of Immunology and Cancer Research at the Lautenberg Center in the School of Medicine.

About the Research:

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly and aggressive cancer types. One primary reason is that pancreatic cancer is usually diagnosed very late, when the tumor has metastasized to distant organs. Metastasis correlates with a bad prognosis and poor response to treatments. It is currently unclear how metastases form, or at which
stage the metastatic cells migrate from the pancreas during tumor development.

Dr. Parnas’s research goal is to understand pancreatic cancer’s malignant process better by exploring the interactions between epithelial cells and other cells in the tissue and tumor microenvironment. The Parnas lab aims to find new markers for the early detection of pancreatic cancer and unknown vulnerabilities in the metastatic process. Dr. Parnas’s work is built on his pioneering studies and the establishment of single-cell RNA seq and CRISPR screening methodologies. These cutting-edge experimental tools can reveal new critical regulators of the malignant and metastatic processes and new therapeutic targets.