Affiliation: The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Keywords: Sex Determination, Testis, Organoids, Stem Cells, Gene Regulatory Networks, Enhancers, Transgenic Mice
Full profile: Nitzan did her PhD at the Technion in Israel working on resistance of cancer cells to antifolate anticancer treatments. She then moved to the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK, for a post-doc with Prof. Robin Lovell-Badge where she worked on sex determination. in 2019, Nitzan established her lab at the Life Sciences Faculty at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Her work focuses on gonad development and sex determination in mammals, and they study the contribution of the non-coding genome to the process of sex determination. They also employ stem cells in order to generate stem-cell derived artificial testis. The lab has recently developed testis organoids from mice with high resemblance to the in vivo testis. The lab uses cutting-edge techniques including CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, transgenic mice production, genetics, high-throughput approaches, computational biology, molecular biology, microscopy as well as employing stem cells work and differentiation protocols.
The work carried in the lab is supported by the ERC Starting Grant, the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) grants and the ISF/SNSF grant. Nitzan was awarded with the prestige Krill Award by the Wolf Foundation for excellence in scientific research in 2023.
In addition to her lab, Nitzan is also the head of the Bar-Ilan University Transgenic Facility where they perform Assisted Reproductive Techniques in mice along with genome editing.
Nitzan is a Board member if the Israeli Stem Cell Society and an active advocator for promoting women-in-science and young PIs.
Nitzan has given many invited talks and actively serves on the panels of committees and grant agencies. Among the talks she has given recently are the European Human Genetic Conference, the Gordon Research Conference on Mammalian Reproduction, the Israeli Endocrinology meeting, the Center of Reproductive Medicine and Andrology (CeRA), the European Testis Workshop, The European Symposium on Sex Determination in vertebrates (ESSDV) and others.