Zoe Assaf

Zoe is a Senior Scientist at Genentech.  Zoe was a Graduate Student in the Petrov Lab (2010-2016). Zoe began her career as a molecular biologist studying cytoskeletal dynamics in Zac Cande's lab at Berkeley, and then moved to Stanford University to do her PhD in Genetics. While in the Petrov lab she investigated the genomic patterns and evolutionary fates of new mutations using genomics, mathematical modeling, and experimental methods including writing a paper on the concept of staggered selective sweeps. After her PhD she joined Natera as a Senior Bioinformatician to help develop diagnostic tests to detect tumor-derived cell free DNA.

Zoe is now a Principal Scientist in the Translational Medicine Department at Genentech where she uses genomics to identify biomarkers for predicting response to novel drug therapies. She currently focuses on implementing ctDNA technologies into clinical trials to accelerate drug development, including work published in Nature demonstrating that ctDNA can identify patients with residual disease in need of additional therapy, and work published in Nature Medicine showing that ctDNA can monitor treatment response and be implemented as an early endpoint that predicts trial outcomes.