The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has announced the appointment of Tel Aviv University (TAU) Professor Dan Peer as Member of the Academy, in recognition of his groundbreaking research to develop unique strategies for delivering RNA molecules. Professor Peer is currently TAU’s Vice President for Research and Development and Head of the Nanomedicine Lab at the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at TAU’s George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at TAU’s Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering.

The NAE is one of the three National Academies in the United States. The others are the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.

Professor Peer is a trailblazing scientist and pioneer in developing RNA-based molecular drugs for a wide range of diseases, including inflammatory bowel diseases; blood, brain, and ovarian cancers; and rare genetic diseases. He also investigates the use of RNA molecules as vaccines for viral diseases and develops nano-scale drug carriers that can target specific cells selectively.

Professor Peer’s lab was first in the world to demonstrate a process for the production of medicinal proteins by RNA molecules in animals, as well as the use of short RNA to silence genes in immune cells and gene editing by means of nanoparticles that target specific cells when injected into the bloodstream.

Professor Peer is the Chair of Ramot, TAU’s technology transfer company, and the Chair of TAU Ventures, Israel’s first university-based venture capital fund. He is also a member of the American Society for Cell Biology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Over the years, he has contributed to over 130 patents that have been commercialized through several companies, and he has played a role in the establishment of startups in Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States.