Dafna Bar-Sagi, PhD

The transformation of normal cells to cancer cells is tightly linked to alterations in signaling cascades that control cell proliferation, differentiation and motility. The research in our laboratory focuses a signaling axis that is deregulated in more than 30% of human cancers due to the mutational activation of the GTP-binding protein Ras. We are interested in defining the contribution of specific molecular perturbations in this signaling axis to cancer initiation and progression with the ultimate goal of utilizing this information for the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. Ongoing projects in the laboratory include the development of cell- and animal-based models to study the role of inflammation in Ras-driven tumorigenesis, the characterization of feedback mechanisms that control the functional output of the Ras signaling axis and the use of chemical biology approaches to identify new modalities for therapeutic targeting.