Dr. Ruth Scherz-Shouval earned a BSc in the life sciences with honors at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2002 and a PhD in biological chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2008 (with Prof. Zvulun Elazar). She conducted postdoctoral research in Prof. Moshe Oren’s laboratory at the Weizmann Institute and in Susan Lindquist’s lab at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and joined the faculty of the Weizmann Institute in October 2015. She is the incumbent of the Ernst and Kaethe Ascher Career Development Chair in Life Sciences.
Dr. Scherz-Shouval is interested in how cancer cells recruit and subvert normal cells to create an environment that promotes tumor progression and metastasis. She studies the protective pathways that cells have evolved to promote their survival under stressful conditions. Cancer exploits some of these defense mechanisms, such as the heat shock response. In her recent work, she discovered that heat-shock factor 1 (HSF1), the master regulator of the evolutionarily conserved heat-shock response, plays a vital role in the tumor microenvironment. She showed how HSF1 can reprogram fibroblasts in a tumor’s microenvironment to support malignancy.
Her professional and educational honors include the Israel Cancer Research Fund Gesher Award for young scientists and the Peter and Patricia Gruber Award in 2016, the AACR Scholar-in-Training Award supported by Susan G. Komen in 2014 and a Stuart fellowship for cancer research in 2011. In 2010, Dr. Scherz-Shouval won a Weizmann Institute of Science National Postdoctoral Award for Advancing Woman in Science, a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Human Frontiers Scientific Program Long-Term Fellowship. She was awarded a Sir Charles Clore Postdoctoral fellowship in 2008, the Feinberg Graduate School Dean’s prize for PhD students in 2007, and an Aharon Katzir Center travel fellowship.