Revolutionizing cancer treatment by modulating aggressive tumor cell behavior

Prof. Itay Tirosh is a pioneer in computational biology with a career dedicated to applying single-cell transcriptomics to cancer research. During his postdoctoral fellowship at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, he was among the first to apply single-cell RNA-sequencing to solid human tumors, revealing the dramatic cellular heterogeneity within glioblastoma and metastatic melanoma. This groundbreaking work, which identifies how diverse cell states drive treatment resistance, forms the scientific foundation of Cellyrix’s platform. Itay is currently a Principal Investigator in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. At Cellyrix, Itay provides high-level scientific guidance, helping to translate his insights into the tumor ecosystem into specific therapeutic targets. Itay holds a PhD and an MSc in Molecular Genetics from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and a BSc in Life Sciences and Computer Science from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Avishai is a computational biologist with more than a decade of experience spanning mathematical modeling, bioinformatics, and large-scale data analysis. During his postdoctoral work at Prof. Tirosh’s lab, he led one of the largest single-cell analyses of cancer to date, published in Nature (2023), identifying shared transcriptional programs across diverse tumors with important clinical implications. These findings form the scientific foundation of Cellyrix’s platform. At Cellyrix, Avishai helps shape computational strategy and analytics and contributes to broader company strategy and decision-making. He is currently a research scientist at Stanford University. Avishai holds an MD from Tel Aviv University and a PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Tel Aviv University, and a BSc in Physics from Tel Aviv University.