Zvi Yaari, PhD

About the Investigator:

Dr. Yaari is the head of the laboratory for ‘Sensing Nanomaterials & Controlled Release Technologies.’ The lab focuses on developing novel optical sensing platforms for real-time monitoring of disease markers. His long-term goal is to generate research and medical devices to enable fast, robust, and diverse measurements of biomarkers in vivo for diagnosis and therapeutic purposes. Dr. Yaari received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Following his postdoctoral research training at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he joined the School of Pharmacy in the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as an Assistant Professor.

About the Research:

Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) is the most lethal form of breast cancer due to difficulties in early diagnosis, its fast progression, and the high chance of recurrence. These factors can severely affect a patient’s outlook and quality of life. Inflammation is also a key factor in the development and progression of many cancers, including TNBC, and current detection methods often do not improve patient outcomes.

To tackle these issues, Dr. Yaari proposes that monitoring the secretion patterns of inflammatory markers from the tumor microenvironment (TME) in real-time can help detect tumor progression at its earliest stages. His research focuses on developing advanced implantable sensors that can simultaneously detect and measure multiple cytokines (a type of protein) secreted by the TME in real-time. These sensors should provide accurate measurements of various inflammatory markers and should alert medical professionals if these markers start to change in a way that suggests TNBC progression.

The new sensors will use the special properties of tiny carbon tubes to detect cytokine levels. By shining light through the skin and measuring the light that comes back, the sensors can find these proteins. If proven successful, this technology should allow doctors to start personalized treatment much earlier and faster. Dr. Yaari and his team hope that this approach will greatly improve patient survival rates by making early diagnosis and treatment of TNBC more effective.