Richard Gregory, PhD
Chair
Dr. Gregory is a Professor of Molecular, Cell & Cancer Biology and the Eleanor Eustis Farrington Chair in Cancer Research. He joined UMass Chan and MCCB in December 2024. Prior to joining UMass Chan, he was at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, where he was Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Pediatrics at HMS, Principal Investigator in the Stem Cell Program in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at BCH, Principal Faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and co-director of the Harvard Medical School Initiative for RNA Medicine.
Dr. Gregory’s pioneering work investigating the molecular mechanisms of RNA regulation in embryonic stem cells and cancer has led to numerous impactful discoveries. As a postdoctoral fellow, he identified the Microprocessor complex as a vital component of the biogenesis of microRNAs (miRNAs) and has gone on to characterize its regulation. He discovered the LIN28/let-7 axis as the first negative regulator of the miRNA biogenesis pathway, which led to the identification of a novel RNA decay pathway, mediated by the DIS3L2 exonuclease, in stem cells in cancer. He has developed new methods for profiling RNA methylation at single nucleotide resolution, linked changes to the epitranscriptome with translational programming in cancer, and identified the RNA methyltransferases METTL1 and METTL3 as oncogenes and new targets for cancer therapies.
Michelle Kelliher, PhD
Executive Vice Chair
Dr. Kelliher is a Professor of Molecular, Cell & Cancer Biology, the inaugural Our Danny Cancer Fund Chair in Biomedical Research, and co-leader of the Cancer Genetics research program of the UMass Cancer Center. She joined UMass Chan in 1998. She has served multiple leadership roles in MCCB, including as the long-time chair of the Department Personnel Action Committee and the Department Tenure Committee, and as the departmental representative on the Institutional Personnel Action and Tenure Committees. She served as the Interim Chair of MCCB from February 2023 to November 2024. In her role as Executive Vice Chair, Dr. Kelliher oversees faculty development and advancement.
Dr. Kelliher is a recognized leader in hematological malignancies, cell death and inflammation research. As a graduate student, she developed a mouse model of chronic myeloid leukemia that is still widely used today. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, she was the first to demonstrate that TAL1 is an oncogene that causes leukemia in mice. Since joining UMass Chan, her research laboratory has focused on how the TAL1, LMO and NOTCH1 oncogenes mediate leukemic transformation, and on the identification of novel drug targets to resensitize relapsed pediatric leukemia patients to glucocorticoid therapy. She was first to develop patient-derived xenografts from pediatric leukemia patients to perform preclinical trials of novel targeted therapies.
Dr. Kelliher also discovered the death domain kinase RIPK1 as a critical regulator of TNF-mediated proinflammatory signaling and cell death. Her lab developed Ripk1 knockout, conditional and kinase inactive mice, which have elucidated the scaffold and kinase dependent functions of RIPK1 in development, and in autoinflammatory and neurodegenerative disease. Her expertise in inflammatory cell death regulation is now focused on identifying strategies to potentiate antitumor immunity.