Vanessa Silveira, PhD

Vanessa Silveira is a cancer biologist with a long-standing focus on RAS-driven cancers and translational oncology. After completing her postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco, she joined the faculty at the University of São Paulo as an Assistant Professor. There, she led an independent research program investigating oncogenic signaling and therapeutic vulnerabilities in RAS-mutant cancers. She later served as a Research Scientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Institute, where her work centered on gastrointestinal malignancies, utilizing patient-derived models and genetically engineered mouse models to study functional gene interactions and mechanisms of resistance to targeted therapies. At DFCI, she is leading the organoid biobanking and therapeutics efforts for the Aguirre Lab as well as for the Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research. Her research interests center on integrating mechanistic studies with patient-derived models to advance the translation of scientific discoveries into potential therapeutic strategies and clinical applications.