Featured Members

Steven F. Dowdy, Ph.D.ProfessorDepartment of Cellular & Molecular Medicine,University of California San Diego (UCSD), School of Medicine How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? I started my lab in 1994 as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and an ...

Shipra Malik, PhDRaman Bahal LabDepartment of Pharmaceutical SciencesUniversity of Connecticut How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? Being from pharmaceutics background, my master’s research was focused on designing nano-formulations to improve the local delivery of small molecules. As I was looking for ...

Saul Martinez Montero, PhD, Director, Oligonucleotide Chemistry at Aligos Therapeutics How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? My graduate studies focused on nucleoside synthesis and on the applications of nucleosides as antiviral agents. In 2012, towards the end of my PhD, ...

Pawan Kumar, PhD Principal Scientist, Takeda Pharmaceuticals How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? I was first exposed to the field of therapeutic oligonucleotides as an exchange PhD student in the Hrdlicka’s lab at the University of Idaho, where I developed ...

M.Sc. Philipp Niklas Ostermann PhD Student Heiner Schaal Lab Institute of Virology University Hospital Düsseldorf How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? I first encountered the use of antisense oligonucleotides as potential therapeutics during my master’s thesis, which was about inhibition of ...

Hermona Soreq, PhDThe Slesinger Professor of Molecular Neuroscience at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) and the Silberman Institute of Life Sciences How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? During my PhD studies ...

Punit Seth, PhD SVP Research, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? It was serendipity. I was hired 21 years back as an organic chemist at Ibis Therapeutics, a division of Isis Pharmaceuticals, to target structured RNA with ...

Vasant Jadhav, PhD. SVP Head of RNAi Platform Alnylam Pharmaceuticals   How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides and who were your early mentors? During undergrad, I was intrigued by the molecular machines and mechanisms behind secrets of life- replication, transcription, ...

My introduction to the field was through functional nucleic acids called aptamers – small pieces of DNA that act as molecular recognition tools. I learned about them as an undergraduate student while completing my B.Sc. in neuroscience and chemistry at Carleton University, from Prof. Maria C. DeRosa, who would become my Ph.D. supervisor.

Tom Brown Ph.D. Professor of Nucleic Acid Chemistry University of Oxford, Founder of ATDBio Ltd (and now Chief consultant).   How did you become interested in the field of oligonucleotides? All my family members were manual workers, and I was the first to go ...