Jacob Jaffe, Ph.D.

Jacob Jaffe is a visiting scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is also head of data science at Inzen Therapeutics.

Jaffe was previously the associate director of the Proteomics Platform at the Broad. In that role, he directed research aimed at elucidating protein-protein, protein-DNA, and protein-small-molecule interactions.

Jaffe conducted research to understand how chromatin and phosphosignaling states change in models of cellular differentiation and disease. These proteomic signatures can benefit both our understanding of basic biological mechanisms and aid drug discovery. His primary research interest was the biochemistry of the feedback and feed-forward loops between histone modifications and cellular phosphosignaling. To study this phenomenon, he quantified post-translational modifications on these proteins in the setting of chemical and genetic perturbations. Through techniques developed in the Proteomics Platform, Jaffe was able to characterize a full complement of these chromatin marks and devised a phosphosignaling assay that captures a snapshot of the cellular state. 

The core enabling technology of Jaffe’s work is mass spectrometry, which allows precise identification and quantification of thousands of proteins in an unbiased manner. Jaffe is an expert in the quantitative analysis of the proteome using stable-isotope labeling techniques (such as SILAC or iTRAQ), as well as algorithmic development for statistical modeling of proteomics data.

Jaffe earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in biology/biochemistry from Harvard University.