Daniel Cohen | Senior Director, Vector Engineering Genomics and Computational Biology
Roche Innovation Center

Dr. Daniel Cohen leads the Vector Engineering, Genomics, and Computational Biology team at the Roche Innovation Center - Philadelphia. His team leads technology innovation efforts in payload designs for AAVs, application of next generation sequencing and bioinformatics approaches to developing nucleic-acid based medicines, and screening for novel non-coding elements regulating gene expression. As a leader within Roche’s Gene Therapy Center of Excellence, he is also championing strategies such as gene switches to unlock the full potential of gene therapy to deliver precise control over the timing and amount of therapeutic transgenes. Prior to joining Roche, he worked at Spark Therapeutics as a Pre-clinical Research Lead, contributing to the development of the Hemophilia A, Pompe, Fabry, and IdeS programs. In December 2020, Dr. Cohen joined Spark’s Discovery team to establish the Vector Optimization team. Dr. Cohen trained at the University of Pennsylvania at the interface of bioengineering and genomics, where he studied how environmental cues controlled the lineage commitment of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells to different cell fates. His research focused on revealing how adipogenic cell fate decisions manifested at the level of chromatin architecture and transcriptional changes, by applying state-of-the-art -omics methods such as ChIP-seq, ChIP-exo, and SICAP. Dr. Cohen earned his B.S. in Biochemistry from Cook College, and his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was an HHMI pre-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Susan Craig (JHU SOM) and a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Christopher Chen’s lab (U. Penn). He has authored 27 scientific manuscripts on the topics of gene therapy, transcriptional regulation of metabolism, tissue microfabrication, mechanotransduction, angiogenesis, adipogenesis, cell-
matrix and cell-cell adhesion.