Dr. David Pellman

Biography

David Pellman, M.D., is the Margaret M. Dyson Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School. He is an HHMI Investigator and serves as the Associate Director for Basic Science at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. David received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Chicago, completed his research training at Rockefeller University, and pursued his postdoctoral fellowship at the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research primarily focuses on the mechanisms of cell division, particularly how errors in cell division lead to rapid genome evolution. His laboratory studies various processes, including spindle positioning during asymmetric cell division, spindle assembly mechanisms, and the nuclear envelope assembly's relationship with chromosome segregation. His work is particularly relevant to understanding mutational processes in cancer. Current projects in his lab explore a newly discovered mutational process known as 'chromothripsis', the impact of nuclear envelope architecture on genome maintenance, and how cytoplasmic chromatin can trigger innate immune pro-inflammatory signaling.

Research Interests