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Phillip D. Zamore, Ph.D. has been the Chair of the RNA Therapeutics Institute since 2016, which was established at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester Massachusetts, in 2009. Dr. Zamore has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2008. Dr. Zamore became the Gretchen Stone Cook Professor of Biomedical Sciences in 2005.

Dr. Zamore received his A.B. (1986) and Ph.D. (1992) degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Harvard University. He then pursued postdoctoral studies on the role of the RNA binding proteins in Drosophila development at The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dr. Zamore’s laboratory studies small RNA silencing pathways in eukaryotes and prokaryotes, including RNA interference (RNAi), microRNA, and PIWI-interacting RNA pathways. Dr. Zamore and his collaborators seek to use these insights to design therapies for human diseases, including Huntington’s disease. Under Dr. Zamore’s mentorship, the Zamore Lab has produced dozens of researchers working at top institutions both in the United States and abroad.

In 2015, Dr. Zamore was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal for Excellence in Scholarship at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. To date, Dr. Zamore has 178 publications and has been among the most highly cited researchers for more than a decade. He serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals and is in demand as a presenter at conferences and institutions worldwide.

Dr. Zamore holds 119 US and foreign patents; he was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2014. Dr. Zamore was elected a fellow in the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member in the National Academy of Sciences, and member in the National Academy of Medicine in 2023. He also received the 2024 Distinguished Research Mentor Award from the RNA Society/Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

In 2002, Dr. Zamore co-founded Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, MA), a publicly traded biotech company which now has more than 1000 employees and multiple drugs in clinical trials. Alnylam’s first drug, ONPATTRO, a first-of-its-kind RNAi therapeutic, for the treatment of the polyneuropathy of hereditary transthyretin-mediated (hATTR) amyloidosis in adults, was approved by the FDA in 2018. In 2014, he co-founded Voyager Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA.