Tal Danino
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
Northwest Corner Building
Tal Danino’s research explores the emerging field of synthetic biology, focusing on engineering bacteria gene circuits to create novel behaviors that have biomedical applications.
Research Interests
Synthetic biology, engineering gene circuits in microbes, cancer therapeutics and diagnostics, mathematical modeling of gene network dynamics, microfluidics, biosensor applications.Tal Danino is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. His lab focuses on engineering bacteria for biomedical applications, with a particular emphasis on developing bacteria as a cancer therapy. Originally from Los Angeles, Tal received a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UCSD in Jeff Hasty's lab, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research with Sangeeta Bhatia. He is the recipient of awards including the NSF CAREER Award, DoD Era of Hope Scholar Award, CRI Lloyd J Old STARs Award, Pershing Square-Sohn Prize, and is a TED Fellow. He directs the Synthetic Biological Systems Laboratory and is a member of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and Data Science Institute.
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
- 2011-15, Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 2005-11, Ph.D. Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego
- 2001-05, B.S. Physics, Chemistry, Math, University of California, Los Angeles
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
- Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Columbia Engineering, 2020 – present
- Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Columbia Engineering, 2016 – 2020
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
- Member, Data Science Institute, Columbia University, 2016 - present
- Member, Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbia University, 2016 - present
HONORS & AWARDS
- 2020 Cancer Research Institute (CRI) Lloyd J. Old Scientist’s Taking Risks (STAR) Award
- 2020 Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research
- 2019 NSF CAREER Award
- 2018 ALCF Young Innovators Team Award (YITA)
- 2017 Breast Cancer Research Foundation-AACR Career Development Award
- 2017 Department of Defense Era of Hope Breast Cancer Scholar Award
- 2015 NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00)
- 2015 TED Fellow
- 2014 New England Biolabs Passion in Science Award
- 2012 NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA)
- 2011 Misrock Postdoctoral Fellowship
- 2006 Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DoE CSGF)
- 2002 Arthur Beckman Undergraduate Research Scholar
- 2001 California Governor’s Math and Science Scholar
PUBLICATIONS
- Doshi, A., Shaw, M., Tonea, R., Moon, S., Doshi, A., Laine, A., Guo, J., Danino, T. Engineered bacterial swarm patterns as spatial records of environmental inputs. bioRxiv 477106 (2022)
- Redenti, A., Hahn, J., Danino, T. Bacterial couriers as cancer vaccines. Nature Biomedical Engineering News & Views 6, 3-5 (2022)
- Doshi, A.*, Shaw, M.*, Tonea, R., Minyety, R., Moon, S., Laine, A., Guo, J., Danino, T. A deep learning pipeline for segmentation of Proteus mirabilis colony patterns. bioRxiv 475672 (2022)
- Vincent, R., Danino, T. CAR-T cells SEAK help from enzymes. Nature Chemical Biology News & Views 18(1) 1-2 (2021)
- Kobayashi H*, Gieniec KA*, Lannagan TRM*, Wang T, Asai N, Mizutani Y, Iida T, Ando R, Thomas EM, Sakai A, Suzuki N, Ichinose M, Wright JA, Vrbanac L, Ng JQ, Goyne J, Radford G, Lawrence MJ, Sammour T, Hayakawa Y, Klebe S, Shin AE, Asfaha S, Bettington ML, Rieder F, Arpaia N, Danino T, Butler LM, Burt AD, Leedham SJ, Rustgi AK, Mukherjee S, Takahashi M, Wang TC, Enomoto A, Woods SL, Worthley DL. The Origin and Contribution of Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts in Colorectal Carcinogenesis. Gastroenterology. Gastroenterology 161(6) (2021)
- Vincent, R.*, Gurbatri, C.*, Redenti, A., Coker, C., Arpaia, N., Danino, T. Probiotic-guided CAR-T cells for universal solid tumor targeting. bioRxiv 463366 (2021)
- Harimoto, T.*, Hahn, J.*, Chen, Y., Im, J., Zhang, J., Hou, N., Coker, C., Gray, K., Harr, N., Chowdhury, C., Pu, K., Nimura, C., Arpaia, N., Leong, K., Danino, T. A programmable probiotic encapsulation system enhances therapeutic delivery in vivo. Nature Biotechnology (accepted) (2021)
- Chien, T.*, Harimoto, T.*, Kepecs, B., Gray, K., Coker, C., Hou, N., Pu, K., Azad, T., Nolasco, A., Pavlicova, M., Danino, T. Enhancing the tropism of bacteria via genetically programmed biosensors. Nature Biomedical Engineering 6, 94-104 (2021)
- Singer, Z.S., Ambrose, P.M., Danino, T.*, Rice, C.M.* Quantitative measurements of early alphaviral replication dynamics in single cells reveals the basis for superinfection exclusion. Cell Systems 12(3), 210-219 (2021)
- Chien, T., Jones, D.R., and Danino, T., Engineered Bacterial Production of Volatile Methyl Salicylate. ACS Synthetic Biology 10(1), 204-208 (2020)
- Gurbatri, C., Iona, L., Vincent, R., Coker, C., Castro, S., Treuting, P., Hinchliffe, T., Arpaia, N., Danino, T. Engineered probiotics for local tumor delivery of checkpoint blockade nanobodies. Science Translational Medicine 12(530) (2020)
- Nature Medicine Research Highlights: Delivering immunotherapy with bacteria
- Columbia News: Designer Probiotic Treatment for Cancer Immunotherapy
- C&EN: Bacteria producing checkpoint inhibitors shrink tumors in mice
- GEN: Engineered Probiotic Bacteria Deliver Anticancer Nanobodies to Regress Tumors in Mice
- BBC Science Focus: Seek and destroy: beneficial bacteria programmed to fight cancer
- Zhu, N.*, Liu, C.*, Singer, Z., Danino, T., Laine, A., Guo, J. Segmentation with residual attention U-Net and an edge-enhancement approach preserves cell shape features. arXiv 2001.05548 (2020)
- Harimoto, T., Danino, T. Engineering Bacteria For Cancer Therapy. Emerging Topics In Life Science 3(5), 623-629 (2019)
- Chowdhury, S., Castro, S., Coker, C., Hinchliffe, T., Arpaia, N.*, Danino, T.* Programmable bacteria induce durable tumor regression and systemic antitumor immunity. Nature Medicine 25(7), 1057–1063 (2019)
- Nature Medicine News & Views: Programmable bacteria as cancer therapy
- New York Times: New Weapons Against Cancer: Millions of Bacteria Programmed to Kill
- F1000 Recommendation
- Harimoto, T., Singer, Z., Velazquez, O., Zhang, J., Castro, S., Hinchliffe, T., Mather, W., Danino, T. Rapid screening of engineered microbial therapies in a 3-D multicellular model. PNAS 116(18), 9002-9007 (2019)
- Columbia News: Bacterial Therapy in a Dish
- Zhu, S., Deb, D., Danino, T. A spatial cell culture model for predicting chemotherapy dosing strategies. bioRxiv 561746 (2019)
- Fedorec, A J.H., Ozdemir, T., Doshi, A., Rosa, L., Velazquez, O., Danino, T., Barnes, C P. Two new plasmid post-segregational killing mechanisms for the implementation of synthetic gene networks in E. coli. iScience 14, 323-334 (2019)
- Ozdemir, T., Fedorec, A J.H., Danino, T., Barnes, C P. Synthetic Biology and Engineered Live Biotherapeutics: Toward Increasing System Complexity. Cell Systems 7(1), 5-16 (2018)
- Geller, L.*, Barzily-Rokni, M.*, Danino, T., Shee, K., Thaiss, C., Livny, R., Avraham, R., Barczak, A., Zwang, Y., Mosher, C., Smith, D., Chatman, K., Skalak, M., Bu, J., Cooper, Z., Tompers, F., Ligorio, M., Qian, Z., Muzumdar, M., Michaud, M., Mandinova, A., Garrett, W., Jacks, T., Ogino, Gurbatri, C., S., Ferrone, C., Thayer, S., Warger, J., Trauger, S., Johnston, S., Huttenhower, C., Gevers, D., Bhatia, S., Golub, T. Straussman, R. Potential role of intratumor bacteria in mediating tumor resistance to the chemotherapeutic drug gemcitabine. Science 357(6356), 1156-1160 (2017)
- Chien, T.*, Doshi, A.*, Danino, T. Advances in bacterial cancer therapies using synthetic biology. Advances in bacterial cancer therapies using synthetic biology. Current Opinions in Systems Biology 5, 1-8 (2017)
- Moon, S.*, Fritz, I.*, Singer, Z.*, Danino, T. Controlling spatial patterning of bacteria via screen printing. 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing (2016)
- Din, O., Danino, T., Prindle, A., Skalak, M., Selimkhanov, J., Allen, K., Julio, E., Atolia, A., Tsimring, L., Bhatia, S., Hasty, J. Synchronized cycles of bacterial lysis for in vivo delivery. Nature (2016)
- Luna, J., Scheel, T., Danino, T., Shaw, K., Takacs, C., Mele, A., Fak, J., Nishiuchi, E., Cantanese, M., Rice, C., Darnell, R. Hepatitis C virus RNA functionally sequesters miR-122. Cell (2015)
- Danino, T.*, Prindle, A.*, Kwong, G., Skalak, M., Li, H., Allen, K., Hasty, J., and Bhatia, S. Programmable Probiotics: Gene Circuit Chaperones for Non-invasive Cancer Detection. Sci. Transl. Med (2015)
- Danino, T.*, Prindle, A.*, Hasty, J., and Bhatia, S. Measuring growth and gene expression dynamics of tumor-targeted S. typhimurium bacteria. Journal of Visualized Experiments 77, e50540 (2013)
- Prindle, A., Selimkhanov, J.S., Danino, T., Samayoa, P., Goldberg, A., Bhatia, S., and Hasty, J. Synthetic biology in clinically relevant microbes. ACS Synthetic biology 1(10), 458-464 (2012)
- Danino, T., Lo, J., Prindle, A., Hasty, J., and Bhatia, S. In vivo gene expression dynamics from tumor-targeted bacteria. ACS Synthetic biology 1(10), 465-470 (2012)
- Cookson, N.A.*, Mather, W.H.*, Danino, T., Mondragón-Palomino, O., Williams, R. J., Tsimring, L. S., and Hasty, J. Queueing up for enzymatic processing: Correlated signaling through coupled degradation. Molecular Systems Biology 7:561, (2011)
- Prindle, A.*, Samayoa, P.*, Razinkov, I., Danino, T., Tsimring, L.S. and Hasty, J. Sensing array of radically coupled genetic biopixels. Nature 481, 39-44 (2011)
- Mondragon-Palomino, O., Danino, T., Selimkhanov, J., Tsimring, L.S., and Hasty, J. Entrainment of a population of synthetic genetic oscillators. Science 333(6047), 1315-1319 (2011)
- Boyer, D., Mather, W., Mondragon-Palomino, O., Orozco-Fuentes, S., Danino, T., Hasty, J., and Tsimring, L. S. Buckling instability in ordered bacterial colonies. Physical Biology 8, 026008 (2011)
- Danino, T., Volfson, D., Bhatia, S., Tsimring, L., and Hasty, J. In-silico pattern formation of vascular mesenchymal stem-cells in three-dimensions. PLoS ONE 6(5), e20182 (2011)
- Mather, W., Mondragon-Palomino, O., Danino, T., Hasty, J., and Tsimring, L.S. Streaming instability in growing cell populations. Physical Review Letters 104(20), 208101 (2010)
- Danino, T.*, Mondragon-Palomino, O.*, Tsimring, L., and Hasty, J. A synchronized quorum of genetic clocks. Nature 463, 326-330 (2010)