The Technion’s story has been intertwined with Israel’s for more than a century, from laying the foundations for a new nation to shaping its future.
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An expert in DNA damage repair and cancer, Prof. Nabieh Ayoub’s laboratory at the Technion focuses on cell biology, CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, DNA damage repair, gene regulation, cancer, and targeted cancer therapy. He and his team of researchers are interested in understanding how cells repair DNA damage. As such, their work centers on identifying new DNA repair proteins and characterizing their roles in DNA damage repair and cancer development. The end goal is to translate these discoveries into diagnostics for early cancer detection and to develop personalized therapeutic tools for combating cancer and other disorders. Among Prof. Ayoub’s many accomplishments, he identified a repertoire of genes that can be harnessed therapeutically to eradicate a subset of lung adenocarcinoma tumors with immediate clinical applicability. In additional research conducted with Technion Professor Ashraf Brik, he discovered unique peptides that can bind with and destroy cancer cells.
Prof. Ayoub earned both his bachelor’s degree in biology and his master’s with distinction in genetics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his Ph.D. from Hadassah Medical School. After a postdoc at Cambridge University, he joined the Technion in 2009 as an assistant professor, and subsequently became an associate professor in 2016 and a full professor in 2023.
Prof. Ayoub is highly active in academia. He chairs committees for the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF). He reviews for many prestigious journals and international funding agencies and both speaks at and organizes international conferences. Prof. Ayoub has received numerous prestigious honors and awards, including the Technion’s Yanai Prize for Excellence in Academic Education (2019), a scholarship for excellence in research from the Israel Cancer Association (2020), the “Maaof” fellowship for Outstanding Arab lecturers (2009-2012), and the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for an outstanding contribution to science (2003).
His research is well-funded by many agencies like ISF, BSF, Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), Israel Cancer Association, German-Israeli Foundation, the U.S. Army, and the Israel Ministry of Science. He has over 35 publications in leading scientific journals, including Nature, Science, Molecular Cell, PNAS, and Nature Communications.
Prof. Ayoub is married, has three children, and resides in Haifa.
