Dr. Erez Dror is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Developmental Biology and Cancer Research at the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC), Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he leads the Dror Laboratory.

Erez has a long-lasting interest in the pancreatic islet — a subject that has fulfilled his scientific curiosity for years and continues to generate new questions. During his doctoral studies at the University of Basel, he investigated a novel physiological crosstalk between macrophages and insulin-producing β cells in the regulation of glucose homeostasis, work that recast inflammatory signaling as a participant in normal metabolic control rather than solely a driver of disease.

His postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology and Epigenetics addressed the molecular basis of β-cell heterogeneity. There he developed SCAN-seq, a method that revealed two distinct β-cell subsets defined by their levels of the chromatin modification H3K27me3 — βLO and βHI — which differ in morphology, metabolism, and insulin secretion. Notably, βHI cells express CD24, a cell-surface glycoprotein implicated in immune regulation, linking epigenetic identity to immune interaction and opening new avenues for research.

The Dror Laboratory uses SCAN-seq alongside other cutting-edge techniques to study the pancreatic islet inside out, with the goal of uncovering novel insights into the immune-metabolic nexus within the islet and translating them into innovative therapeutic approaches for diabetes.