Robert B. Darnell

Dr. Darnell is the Heilbrunn Professor at Rockefeller University, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, the Founding Director and CEO Emeritus of the NY Genome Center, and a Member of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine.  His clinical and basic work work pioneered studies of paraneoplastic neurologic disorders, in which tumor immunity is unmasked when rare cancer patients develop brain autoimmunity. This was crucial proof of concept leading to modern cancer immunotherapy. Specifically, he found that human tumor immunity results from antigen-specific CD8+ T cells, helping support the nascent field of immuno-oncology. He also discovered target antigens were RNA-binding proteins, revealing that neurons have unique systems for regulating RNA. Darnell developed CLIP, now the gold standard for identifying RNA-regulatory protein interactions in living tissues, revealing functions of neuronal splicing factors, pinpointing miRNA actions, and defining translational regulation by the Fragile-X protein.  He most recently has been interested in using high-end technology to make human genetics clinically helpful.