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Assistant Professor Ken Yamada, PhD is an assistant professor in the RNA Therapeutics Institute (RTI) at UMass Chan Medical School and also a visiting associate professor at the Institute of Science Tokyo. Dr Yamda's research interests are in the interdisciplinary fields of chemistry, biology, and biophysics to understand the chemical, structural, and biological mechanisms behind the interactions across synthetic functional RNA molecules and the biological ecosystem. His research is directed at investigating transformative novel chemistry platforms for opening difficult extrahepatic tissues to oligonucleotide therapeutic intervention. Ken is originally from Japan, and his exploration of nucleic acid chemistry began when he was a PhD student in Professor Mitsuo Sekine’s lab at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he cultivated his discipline as a nucleic acid and oligonucleotide chemist. After his career path led to a postdoctoral position in Professor Masad Damha’s lab at McGill University (2012-2014) and an assistant professor position at Tohoku University in Japan (2014-2017, Professor Nagatsugi’s lab), he joined Professor Anastasia Khvorova’s lab in 2017 to explore his potential as a chemist to contribute to the RNA therapeutics field. An assistant professor in the RTI since 2021, Ken has played a key role in fostering a dynamic, collaborative scientific environment. He has established several innovative chemistry platforms for siRNA (and potentially other therapeutic RNA modalities) including extended nucleic acids (exNA), in a long-term collaboration with Dr Khvorova. This platform surpasses current state-of-the-art siRNA technology. His inventions have resulted in multiple patents, some of which have been licensed to leading biotech companies. The exNA platform is now being applied in multiple advanced therapeutic research programs at the RTI, focusing on extrahepatic and central nervous system RNAi, as well as at external research institutes in the US and Europe.
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