Yardena Samuels

Prof. Yardena Samuels received her BSc from Cambridge University, UK in 1993, and earned an MSc in immunology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in 1997. She completed a PhD at Imperial College, London in 2002. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Prof Vogelstein’s laboratory at Johns Hopkins University from 2003 to 2006. She served as an assistant professor at NIH before joining the Weizmann Institute in 2012. Today she is the director of the EKARD Institute for Cancer Diagnosis Research and is the incumbent of the Knell Family Professorial Chair. Prof. Samuels is the recipient of the Pezcoller Foundation - EACR Cancer Researcher Award, the Youdim Family Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research, has recently been nominated an EMBO member and is the President Elect for the European Association for Cancer Research

Prof. Samuels’ focus involves the identification of gene mutations that play a role in the progression of cutaneous melanoma. Her aim is to delineate ideal protein target combinations in melanoma to achieve lasting disease control. Her lab was part of the TCGA workgroup who published the Genomic Classification of Cutaneous Melanoma. Her lab has developed novel methods to identify cancer neo-antigens using genetic and proteomic methods. She has further been characterizing the immune response to these neo-antigens and developed relevant mouse models to investigate the role tumor heterogeneity plays in the tumor immune response.