Mariano A. Garcia-Blanco

Biosketch

Mariano A Garcia-Blanco, MD PhD is F. Palmer Weber Medical Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology at the University of Virginia. He was born in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico. He received his AB in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard College, and MD and PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University. He completed a fellowship in molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined Duke University as Assistant Professor in 1990. At Duke University he was a founder and director of the Duke Center for RNA Biology and Charles D. Watts Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology. While at Duke he was a principal in the establishment of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Research Program at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. From 2014 to 2022 he was Vacek Distinguished Chair and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Garcia-Blanco founded Intronn, Singapore Advanced Biologics, Autoimmunity BioSolutions, and CircuRNA. He is a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology, and a member of the Association of American Physicians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Research Interests

Dr. Garcia-Blanco work focuses on how RNA-protein interactions impact pathogenic RNA viruses and regulate human immune responses. His work on dengue and Zika viruses identified human and mosquito pro- and anti-viral host factors, many of which are RNA-binding proteins, and elucidated the anti-immune action of a viral non-coding RNA. Work on the alternative splicing of interleukin 7 receptor transcripts and the RNA-binding proteins that regulate this splicing uncovered a pathway that promotes susceptibility to autoimmune diseases. Basic studies on the connections between RNA and immunity continue and have led to the exploration of therapeutic approaches where RNA is a tool or a target.