Dafna Bar-Sagi


Dafna Bar-Sagi is a cell biologist and cancer researcher at New York University. She is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and the Department of Medicine and Senior Vice President and Vice Dean for Science at NYU Langone School of Medicine. Bar-Sagi has been a member of scientific advisory boards, including the National Cancer Institute, Starr Cancer Consortium, and Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
Her research focuses on the nature of the RAS oncogene and how RAS signaling leads to tumor development, particularly in pancreatic cancer.

Early life

Education

Dafna Bar-Sagi was born and raised in Israel. Here she attended Bar-Ilan University where she earned her undergraduate and master's degrees in neurobiology. She received her PhD in neurobiology in the United States from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Career

Dafna Bar-Sagi conducted her postdoctoral research in the lab of Dr. James Feramisco in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, where she worked on the nature of the RAS proteins in 1986, and eventually served as senior staff investigator. In 1995, she became faculty at the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at State University of New York at Stony Brook and served as the Department Chair from 2003 to 2006. She transitioned to NYU Langone Medical Center in 2006, where she became chair of the Department of Biochemistry. She has served as Vice Dean for Science and Chief Scientific Officer at NYU Langone Medical Center since 2011, and is now a principal strategist for the medical center.

Research

Dafna Bar-Sagi's research began in 1986, while completing her postdoctoral work with Dr. James Feramisco in Cold Spring Harbor. In this laboratory, Bar-Sagi and Feramisco were the first to observe how RAS protein facilitates cellular uptake of nutrients through macropinocytosis. She continues to study the function of RAS oncogenes and mutant RAS proteins in cell proliferation, survival, nutrient uptake, cell metabolism and tumorigenesis, particularly in pancreatic cancer. Recent studies in the Bar-Sagi lab have focused on the treatment of mutant KRAS cancer cells, and understanding how they withstand targeted therapies, as well as identification of novel therapeutic strategies for RAS-driven cancers.

Selected publications

Awards and Honors