Landau Lab

Dan A. Landau, MD, PhD, is a Core Faculty Member at the New York Genome Center. He holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology and the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Landau and his lab study primarily human cancer which constitutes a unique phenomenon in evolutionary biology – ‘reverse engineering’ whereby cells rescind the multicellular contract and evolve to more closely resemble unicellular organisms. Importantly, the evolutionary plasticity of cancer imposes significant limitations on the potential of cancer therapies. Dr. Landau’s goal is to chart a roadmap of the basic dimensions that determine the course of cancer evolution, in order to devise therapies that directly anticipate and address tumor evolution. He has pioneered the study of intra-tumoral genetic and epigenetic diversity in patient samples to enable the study of cancer evolution in its natural environment. Dr. Landau’s work has been recognized with many honors, most recently a 2019 Weill Cornell Department of Medicine Young Investigators Award, a 2018 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the inaugural ASPIRE (Accelerating Scientific Platforms and Innovative Research) Award from The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, a Stand Up to Cancer Philip A. Sharp Innovation in Collaboration Award, the Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research, and a Lung Cancer Discovery Award from the American Lung Association. Dr. Landau obtained his MD from Tel Aviv University. He then went on to receive his PhD from Paris Diderot University. Prior to joining the New York Genome Center, Dr. Landau was an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, working at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute. To learn more about Dr. Landau’s research, visit his lab page.