News from the Anastasia Khvorova Lab at UMass Chan Medical School

Representatives from UMass Chan presented on several topics and career paths, including RNA Therapeutics Institute, ScienceLive, community and government relations, diversity and inclusion and media and arts in sciences.

A new RNA therapeutic for preeclampsia is based on work by UMass Chan researchers and collaborating scientists. Researchers explain the importance of a multipronged approach to addressing factors underlying health disparities in this Science for Living article.

MD/PhD student Jillian Belgrad has received an award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study the pathology that drives the development of Huntington’s disease symptoms.  

A multidisciplinary team of UMass Chan scientists has developed a technology for delivering siRNA molecules locally to lung tissue, providing the first evidence of a platform capable of delivering chemically modified siRNAs to the lungs nasally and achieving robust genetic silencing.

Anastasia Khvorova, PhD, is one of 169 academic inventors selected as a 2022 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

ALS research at UMass Chan Medical School is the big beneficiary as select Boston Marathon runners raise tens of thousands of dollars each year. This year, five competitors in the April 18 event are running as part of the UMass Chan ALS Cellucci Fund Boston Marathon team and two sons of the late Jake Kennedy will run in support of the Jake Kennedy ALS Fund.

The UMass Cancer Center Pilot Project Program has awarded seed grants to five UMass Chan Medical School research projects to enable investigators to gather pilot data for external cancer-focused funding.

Six UMass Medical School scientists are among the members of the National Institutes of Health’s Somatic Cell Genome Editing Consortium to publish a paper in Nature outlining the program’s goals.

Atalanta Therapeutics, a biotech founded by UMass Medical School and three faculty research scientists to pioneer treatment options for neurodegenerative diseases, has launched with financing by venture capital fund F-Prime Capital and strategic collaborations with Biogen and Genentech.

The new vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna use messenger RNA to stimulate the immune system to protect against COVID-19. These vaccines are the first of their kind and researchers at UMass Medical School are among the leading RNA biologists in the world.