PhD candidate Seden Bedir moved from Turkey to the U.S. to study at UMass Chan Medical School. She aims to engineer RNA sequences that don’t exist in nature in order to enable mRNA-based therapeutics beyond vaccines. In her free time, she mentors students from Turkey.  

Natick resident and Stanford Online High School student Rebecca Ahn outperformed other local high school students in the final round of the competition on March 16.

STAT News has selected three research teams from UMass Chan to compete in its 2024 STAT Madness competition. Members of the public are invited to vote for the best biomedical research from 2023. The first round of voting, which will narrow the field from 64 to 32, has begun.

Students will be competing for the Andrew Sheridan Young Neuroscientist Award and an all-expense paid trip to participate in the 2024 USA National Bee at the University of Central Florida in April. 

Rett syndrome is a rare genetic neurological disorder that occurs primarily in girls, eventually robbing them of the ability to speak, walk or use their hands, among other devastating effects.

In an updated article originally published by The Conversation in Feb. 2023, Fen-Biao Gao, PhD, talks about how frontotemporal dementia changes the brain and the research that is untangling its genetic causes.

UMass Chan researcher Li Li, PhD, writes for The Conversation about how mRNA drug development, which led to the first COVID-19 vaccine, offers significant advantages over traditional drug development.

UMass Chan presented “scientist-in-training” lab coats to Lake View Elementary School, one of the 11 North Quadrant schools in Worcester that are part of the UMass Chan North Quadrant Support Services Initiative.

PhD student Valeria Sanabria, MD, won the Zelda Haidak Scholarship in Cell Biology, which was established to enhance training for women pursuing research careers in cell biology. Her research is focused on studying gene expression at the transcriptional level.

UMass Chan Medical School hosted 23 science teachers from six Worcester middle schools to train them on the light microscopes recently donated to their classrooms by the Medical School, thanks to a grant from the Moderna Foundation.

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.

UMass Chan Medical School scientists Phillip D. Zamore, PhD, and Roger J. Davis, PhD, FRS, were elected to the National Academy of Medicine on Oct. 9 for their distinguished contributions to medicine and health.

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.

The UMass Chan community gathered to celebrate 53 PhD candidates and MD/PhD students who transitioned from student to candidate for a doctoral degree during the 2022-2023 academic year.

PhD candidate John Girgenrath has received a competitive award from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to conduct fertility research.

Water Safe Worcester’s summer session is underway every Wednesday night through the end of August. The program is free and open to all teenagers in the Worcester area.

The BRIDGE Fund supports critical research milestones for inventions and discoveries that have high potential to change the course of disease and continues to grow, increasing from approximately $1 million per year in 2019 to $3 million in 2024.

An antisense therapy developed by Joel D. Richter, PhD, Sneha Shah, PhD, and Jonathan K. Watts, PhD, at UMass Chan Medical School and Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, MD, PhD, at RUSH University Medical Center, restores production of the protein FMRP in cell samples taken from patients with fragile X syndrome. 

PhD candidate Carolyn Kraus has received an award from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases to develop a CRISPR/Cas9 tool for designing a safer Duchenne muscular dystrophy therapeutic.

John E. Harris, MD, PhD, and Manuel Garber, PhD, will lead a $3.75 million NIH clinical study at UMass Chan Medical School to identify potential preclinical genetic, molecular and biological signatures that may predispose patients to developing vitiligo.

Dozens of new microscopes will be delivered to six Worcester middle schools thanks to a partnership between UMass Chan Medical School and Moderna.

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.  

In a one-on-one interview, Terence R. Flotte shares what inspired him to pursue a career in medicine and what he’s learned in his role as provost and dean of the T.H. Chan School of Medicine at UMass Chan.

Seven women were honored for career achievements in science and health care during the 23rd annual Women’s Faculty Awards at UMass Chan Medical School.

Phillip D. Zamore, PhD, is one of 120 newly elected members of the National Academy of Sciences who were recognized for distinguished achievements in original research. Dr. Zamore is credited with identifying the biochemical machinery responsible for RNA silencing.

Katherine Fitzgerald, PhD, and Phillip D. Zamore, PhD, were elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, which honors excellence and leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together to cultivate every art and science.

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.

Athma A. Pai, PhD, was awarded a nearly $1 million CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation to use new high-throughput genomics approaches to study the regulation of mRNA splicing.

Sisters Ashley Craig and Lacey Foley joined the UMass ALS Cellucci Fund Boston Marathon team in memory of their grandmother. Brothers Dean and Zack Kennedy, PhD’19, are running on the Jake Kennedy ALS Fund team, in honor of their father.

UMass Chan Medical School has licensed siRNA chemistries developed by Julia Alterman, PhD, to Aldena Therapeutics for clinical development for dermatological diseases.

In a piece written for The Conversation, Fen-Biao Gao, PhD, talks about how frontotemporal dementia changes the brain and the research that is untangling its genetic causes.

PhD candidate David Keener has received a National Institutes of Health grant to fund his research project on Rett syndrome, a genetic neurodevelopmental disease generally diagnosed in girls ages 6 to 18 months.

Claudio Punzo, PhD; Johanna Seddon, MD, ScM; and Shun-Yun Cheng, PhD’22, are receiving awards from the American Macular Degeneration Foundation.

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

Angela Messmer-Blust, PhD, was selected as the inaugural winner of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society’s Science Outreach Award.

The Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences honored the new doctoral candidates during its annual Qualifying Exam Recognition Ceremony on Wednesday, Sept. 14, at which Dean Mary Ellen Lane encouraged the honorees to continue “growing, learning and stretching out of your comfort zone.”

Nearly 600 students in Worcester received backpacks filled with school supplies this week, thanks to the UMass Chan Medical School community.

Movies piqued PhD candidate Humberto Ochoa’s interest in science. He’s conducting RNA research in the lab of Nobel Laureate Craig C. Mello, PhD, to understand the national decline in fertility.

A recent survey of health care professionals showed nearly 60 percent of participants encountered patients whose infections didn’t respond to any antibiotic. Andrei Korostelev, PhD, says by studying the biology of bacterial cells, effective new antibiotics can be developed.

Guangping Gao, PhD, and Dan Wang, PhD, show the first evidence that a suppressor transfer RNA therapy, delivered by a recombinant adeno-associated virus, can restore protein production up to six months after treatment in a mouse model of the rare genetic disease mucopolysaccharidosis type I.

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.

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.

UMass alumni Dan and Diane M. Casey Riccio, PhD, have pledged $15 million to UMass Chan Medical School to establish the Riccio ALS Accelerator Initiative and to expand and endow the Riccio Fund for Neuroscience.

PhD student Katya Makeyeva investigates how small RNA pathways regulate gene expression of reproductive cells in the lab of Nobel Laureate Craig Mello, PhD.

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.

A coloring book created by a team at UMass Chan Medical School is helping children learn about the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 and the RNA vaccines that protect against it.

Researchers from UMass Chan Medical School have received a five-year $13.6 million program project grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to develop new gene therapy models for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a chronic, debilitating genetic lung disease that shortens the lifespan.

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.

Funded projects led by faculty, students, staff and community partners have the potential to improve the health of Central Massachusetts residents, particularly those who are economically or educationally disadvantaged or underrepresented.

Chancellor Michael F. Collins gave his annual Convocation address on Thursday, Sept. 9, in the Albert Sherman Center Auditorium, focusing on the “transformational moment” for the institution. Four faculty members were honored with Chancellor’s Medals, including the late Robert Finberg.

Nearly 600 backpacks were distributed to students at Rice Square, Grafton Street and Union Square elementary schools thanks to the UMass Medical School North Quadrant Support Services partnership with the Worcester Public Schools.

Two studies from the lab of Daryl Bosco, PhD, offer new insights into the biochemical and molecular mechanisms that cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

An interactive online science program for middle school students developed and presented by UMass Medical School researchers will deepen its partnership with Worcester Public Schools this fall.

Roger Davis, PhD, FRS, and the Cryo-EM Core facility at UMass Medical School have received $2.8 million from The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to purchase an advanced Glacios cryo-electron microscope from Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Nikolaus Grigorieff, PhD, and Bronwyn Lucas, PhD, have received a $1.3 million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to develop new computational and data collection tools for locating specific molecules with near-atomic accuracy within cells using cryo-EM imaging technology.

Two UMass Medical School professors have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

UMass Medical School has entered into a three-year, collaborative research agreement with Pfizer to evaluate determinants that influence the manufacturing quality and yield of viral vectors used in gene therapy. The research at UMMS is being performed under the direction of Guangping Gao, PhD, and Dan Wang, PhD.

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.

Two research teams from UMass Medical School have been selected by STAT News to compete among 64 contestants in the 2021 STAT Madness competition. Voting begins March 1.

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.

UMass Medical School postdoctoral fellow Anna Loveland, PhD, has been named a STAT Wunderkind by the health and science media company STAT. STAT Wunderkinds honors the brightest young minds in life science for their work in academia, industry, and in the clinic.

UMass Medical School’s RNA Therapeutics Institute and Sanderson Center for Optical Experimentation have partnered with Technocopia Inc., a nonprofit community makerspace in downtown Worcester, to develop ScienceLIVE, a virtual outreach program to deliver science to middle school students during the pandemic.

On behalf of the UMass Medical School community, we extend our sincere condolences to Jake Kennedy’s family and to all who knew and loved him. Jake Kennedy died Tuesday, Oct. 13, at age 65, in his Salem, N.H., home of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Douglas T. Golenbock, MD; Gregory A. Volturo, MD; Anastasia Khvorova, PhD; Erik J. Sontheimer, PhD; and Jennifer A. Reidy, MD, have been named to endowed faculty posts at UMass Medical School.

The Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, in collaboration with Morgan Stanley GIFT Cures, has chosen two UMass Medical School faculty members to receive Harrington Scholar Awards for Coronavirus.

A new study by a team of UMass Medical School researchers, led by Jordan Smith, MD/PhD candidate, has identified a new therapeutic target in hepatoblastoma, a rare, primarily pediatric liver cancer.

UMass Medical School RNA therapeutics expert Anastasia Khvorova, PhD, has been elected by the membership of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy to a three-year term as director-at-large/scientific & research council chair, which will begin at the 2020 ASGCT virtual annual meeting.

A pair of collaborative studies led by Fen-Biao Gao, PhD, have identified two potential drug targets for the diseases amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia. The studies provide a new layer of detail about how the most common genetic mutation responsible for both ALS and FTD causes neuron cell death.

Biomedical sciences career development expert Cynthia Fuhrmann, PhD, discusses her own pioneering career in this latest Women in Science video.

Fen-Biao Gao, PhD, was selected to receive a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award, a conditional seven-year, $4.16 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Fen-Biao Gao, PhD, the Governor Paul Cellucci Chair in Neuroscience Research and professor of neurology, studies the genetic mutations that cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia.

Research by Fen-Biao Gao, PhD, shows that age-related DNA damage caused by oxidative stress is a key contributor to the breakdown of motor neurons in some amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia patients.

Abnormal protein production, not nuclear RNA foci, is a major source of toxicity in the most common genetic form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia, according to a new study by Fen-Biao Gao, PhD, published in the journal Neuron.

Fen-Biao Gao, PhD, and colleagues have determined how the most common gene mutation in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia disrupts normal cell function by interfering with the movement of RNAs and proteins into and out of the nucleus.

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center announced a $5 million grant to UMass Medical School for the purchase of a high resolution cryo-electron microscope, bringing this breakthrough imaging technology to a campus poised to usher in the next generation of drug design and discovery.

Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences professor Phillip Zamore and assistant dean Cynthia Fuhrmann are enthusiastic about a new NIH career training grant to create a career development curriculum for graduate students.