Mariano A. Garcia-Blanco

Mariano A. Garcia-Blanco is the F. Palmer Weber Medical Research Professor and Chair of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology at the University of Virginia. He studies how RNA-protein interactions regulate gene expression and has made fundamental discoveries at the intersection of RNA biology and immunity. The Garcia-Blanco laboratory uncovered a novel pathway controlled by the RNA helicase DDX39B that protects from autoimmune diseases and promises new therapeutic avenues for these devastating diseases. His group also discovered important cellular RNA-binding proteins that control infections with pathogenic RNA viruses. Garcia-Blanco attended Harvard College, received his MD and PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University, and completed a fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He started his independent career at Duke University in 1990, where he spent 24 years and while there established a second laboratory at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. From 2014 to 2022 he was professor and chair at the University of Texas Medical Branch. In addition to his science, Garcia-Blanco has been a program-building leader, co-founding the Duke Center for RNA Biology, founding the Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS, and rebuilding the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Garcia-Blanco has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1991, has published more than 190 articles, and has mentored more than 60 doctoral and postdoctoral trainees. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians, fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Garcia-Blanco has been scientific co-founder of several biotechnology companies, including Intronn in the mid 1990s, which was one of the first companies in the RNA therapeutics space.