Dr. Dannielle Engle

Biography

Dannielle Engle is an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute, with a primary appointment in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Her research is deeply personal, stemming from her own experiences with pancreatic cancer in close family members. Engle's work focuses on utilizing her expertise in modeling to advance pancreatic cancer research by developing accurate representations of the disease as it manifests in real patients. She aims to identify biomarkers and therapeutic targets that are often hindered by limited access to pure sample populations. Through innovative techniques, her lab studies hidden signals in patients' blood samples and pancreatic tumor tissue to uncover underlying mechanisms of the disease, moving past traditional approaches that rely solely on cell lines. Engle's team creates organoid and genetically engineered mouse models to recapitulate pancreatic disease, identifying new therapeutic targets and assessing their efficacy in immune competent mouse models. Her focus on both diagnosis and treatment is crucial for improving patient outcomes. Engle completed her Ph.D. in the laboratory of Dr. Geoffrey M. Wahl at the Salk Institute and finished her postdoctoral fellowship under Dr. David Tuveson at the Cambridge Research Institute, later becoming a Senior Fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Since returning to Salk in 2019, she has played an active role in scientific outreach and has received several accolades, including the Theodore T. Puck NCI K99/R00 Pathway Independence Award.

Research Interests