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Jonathan Watts, PhD

Associate Professor, RNA Therapeutics Institute

Website

Research Focus - Medicinal Chemistry of Therapeutic RNAs

  • Chemistry and chemical biology of oligonucleotides
  • Nucleic acid drug development

Representative Publications

  • 5'-Modifications improve potency and efficacy of DNA donors for precision genome editing. Ghanta KS, Chen Z, Mir A, Dokshin GA, Krishnamurthy PM, Yoon Y, Gallant J, Xu P, Zhang XO, Ozturk AR, Shin M, Idrizi F, Liu P, Gneid H, Edraki A, Lawson ND, Rivera-Pérez JA, Sontheimer EJ, Watts JK, Mello CC.Elife. 2021 Oct 19;10:e72216. doi: 10.7554/eLife.72216.PMID: 34665130 Read Publication
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In the News

  • UMass Chan clinical trial shows antisense oligonucleotide safely suppresses mutant ALS gene in pilot human study
    Research News
    Dec 23, 2021

    UMass Chan clinical trial shows antisense oligonucleotide safely suppresses mutant ALS gene in pilot human study

    Robert H. Brown Jr., DPhil, MD, Jonathan Watts, PhD, and colleagues have shown the ability to suppress mutant forms of an ALS gene in a single-patient pilot study.

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  • Inside the new mRNA vaccines for COVID-19
    Research News
    Dec 18, 2020

    Inside the new mRNA vaccines for COVID-19

    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.

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  • Erik Sontheimer co-leading efforts to develop gene editing toolkit by NIH Somatic Cell Genome Editing Consortium
    Research News
    Apr 7, 2021

    Erik Sontheimer co-leading efforts to develop gene editing toolkit by NIH Somatic Cell Genome Editing Consortium

    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.

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  • UMass Chan ALS paper selected for STAT Madness
    Research News
    Mar 1, 2022

    UMass Chan ALS paper selected for STAT Madness

    Robert H. Brown Jr., DPhil, MD, Jonathan Watts, PhD, and colleagues showed the ability to suppress mutant forms of the ALS gene known as C9ORF72 in a single-patient pilot study. The paper reporting the results is part of the 2022 STAT News STAT Madness competition.

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