CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. MUTHIAH MANOHARAN on Receiving the 2021 Derek Horton Award in INDUSTRIAL Chemistry!
Dr. Mauthiah (Mano) Manoharan, Vice President and a Distinguished Research Scientist of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA, has received the 2021 Derek Horton Award in Industrial Chemistry. Dr. Manoharan earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with Professor Ernest L. Eliel and pursued post-doctoral research at Yale University and the University of Maryland with Professor John A. Gerlt. Dr. Manoharan has spent his industrial career in the field of antisense oligonucleotide therapeutics at Ionis (formerly Isis) Pharmaceuticals and Lifecodes Corporation, and in 2003 he became the first chemist at Alnylan.
He and his team pioneered the discovery and development of chemical modifications that make RNA interference-based human therapeutics possible, and his work led to the the first RNAi therapeutic approved by FDA in 2018 (ONPATTRO (patisiran)). Dr. Manoharan’s research group demonstrated for the first time the human therapeutic applications of GalNAc-conjugated oligonucleotides, a platform that has revolutionized the nucleic acid-based therapeutics field with several compounds in the advanced clinical trials. He is an author of more than 210 publications, an inventor of over 225 issued U.S. patents, and a recipient of the M. L. Wolfrom Award (2007) for his contributions to this field
