SCSAP SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT
Itay Tirosh, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Dept. of Molecular Cell Biology
Weizmann Institute of Science
Abstract
Single cell analysis of tumors has enabled the characterization of diverse cancer cell states that are associated with metastasis, drug resistance, proliferation and other cancer phenotypes. For example, we uncovered cancer cellular states that recur across most patients with glioblastoma (GBM) or head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and have important implications. However, these cellular states and their functions are highly dependent on the entire tumor ecosystem. To understand the organization of cell states we apply spatial transcriptomics and spatial proteomics to human tumors and develop computational approaches to analyze these datasets. In this talk I will describe our recent spatial studies in the two contexts that we focus on – glioblastoma and head and neck cancer.
Short Bio
Itay Tirosh obtained his PhD in computational biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science. From 2012 to 2017 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Regev and Golub labs at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he pioneered the application of single cell RNA sequencing to human tumors. Since 2017 he has been a PI at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Tirosh lab is applying single cell and spatial technologies to clinical tumor samples, primarily in glioma and head and neck cancer, and combines that with extensive computational analysis.
Publications of Interest:
The multilayered transcriptional architecture of glioblastoma ecosystems.
A single-cell atlas of Schwannoma across genetic backgrounds and anatomic locations.