Dr. Jeffrey Wrana

Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Senior Investigator Dr. Jeff Wrana is internationally recognized for his cancer research. While most current cancer investigations focus on specific disease pathways, Dr. Wrana believes cancer involves a complex network of pathways that work together to misregulate cells and cause disease. His research aims to expose the mechanisms involved in the development of these networks and to reveal new targets for treatments that would attack the entire disease network, not just individual hubs.

Dr. Wrana's research program involves the application of high-throughput, robotics-based technologies to interrogate biological systems on a genome-wide scale. He established the LTRI SMART high throughput biology facility that was amalgamated into the Network Biology Collaboration Centre in collaboration with Drs. Anne-Claude Gingras and Laurence Pelletier.

Dr. Wrana’s group is currently exploiting human patient specimens, animal models, and 3D organoid models, together with single cell technologies, to understand at the cellular and molecular level, the intimate link between the acquisition of stem cell phenotypes, tissue regeneration and the initiation and progression of cancer.