Daniel Peeper

Biography

Daniel Peeper received his PhD in the laboratory of Alex van der Eb at the University of Leiden (The Netherlands, 1994), for his work on adenoviral oncoproteins and cell cycle-regulatory proteins. He received his first postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Mark Ewen  (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, USA), where he discovered the functional connection between Ras and the retinoblastoma protein. During a second postdoctoral period in the laboratory of René Bernards (Netherlands Cancer Institute), he studied cellular protection against oncogenic transformation, by using function-based genome-wide screens. He received a senior research position at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in 2000. In 2002, as a Principal Investigator he began running his own laboratory at this institute, first in the Division of Molecular Genetics. In 2002, Peeper became Assistant Professor at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. Three years later he received a permanent staff position and Associate Professorship at the same Institute.  Also in that year, Peeper was elected as an EMBO Young Investigator. In 2006, he was awarded an NWO VICI grant on synthetic lethality screens for novel anticancer drug targets. In 2007, he received the first Queen Wilhelmina Award (awarded by her Majesty the Queen and the minister of Education, on behalf of the Netherlands Cancer Society KWF; € 2 million), for his work on melanoma in collaboration with W. Mooi (VUmc). In the same year, he received the Society for Melanoma Research (SMR) Jr. Researcher Award. In 2008, Peeper was appointed Professor (part time) of Functional Oncogenomics at the VUmc. In the same year, he was elected as EMBO member. In 2012, he was elected as Member of the Executive and Educational Committees of the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR). Recently, Peeper, together with Anton Berns, David Adams, Mike Stratton and colleagues received a € 15 million ERC Synergy grant for "COMBATCANCER", the development of combinatorial cancer therapy. Peeper is Head of the Division of Molecular Oncology and Chair of the Scientific Council at the Netherlands Cancer Institute.

Research Interest

Molecular Oncology