Corey first holder of Kelley Professorship in Medical Science
By Deborah Wormser
Dr. David Corey, known for his pioneering studies of RNA interference (RNAi) and RNA activation (RNAa) and their potential role in preventing or treating disease, has been named the inaugural holder of the Rusty Kelley Professorship in Medical Science.
The endowment was established in 2006 by gifts from various donors to honor Mr. Kelley, a longtime supporter of UT Southwestern Medical Center.
“Receiving the Kelley Professorship is one of the greatest honors of my career,” said Dr. Corey, Professor of Pharmacology and of Biochemistry. “The support will allow my laboratory to follow through on risky projects that have the potential for a substantial payoff.”
In explaining his research, he said, “We are working to develop flexible ways to treat or prevent disease by controlling the expression of genes by using RNA interference or RNA activation to turn genes’ output up or down.”
Dr. David Mangelsdorf, Chairman of Pharmacology, highlighted the potential of Dr. Corey’s basic research advances.
“He studies a variety of projects at the interface of chemistry and biology in the laboratory he runs with Associate Professor of Pharmacology Dr. Bethany Janowski, which are providing key insights into important cellular processes with implications for many clinical conditions,” Dr. Mangelsdorf said. “Their investigations could potentially lead to new strategies to fight human disease. David’s investigations have resulted in seven approved patents and he has several more patents pending.”
RNA is a chemical cousin to DNA, the well-known and much studied carrier of genetic information. In the last decade, the Corey/Janowski laboratory has found and characterized a pathway by which RNA molecules activate the expression of certain genes. In a study published in 2014 in Cell Reports, a Corey/Janowski investigation demonstrated that three proteins involved in RNA interference are both present and active inside the cellular nucleus, long a topic of debate in the field
A faculty member since 1992, Dr. Corey has a longstanding interest in applying nucleic acids to therapy. In a 2012 study in Cell, he reported that a small interfering RNA potently inhibited production of mutant Huntington protein, pointing to a potential strategy to treat the currently incurable genetic disease.
A Cambridge, Mass., native, Dr. Corey graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in chemistry. He completed his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California Berkeley and conducted postdoctoral research in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California San Francisco, where he held a Damon Runyon Walter Winchell Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr. Corey received a secondary appointment in the Department of Biochemistry in 1996, became an Associate Professor in 1998, and was promoted to Professor in 2003.
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Dr. Mangelsdorf holds the Raymond and Ellen Willie Distinguished Chair in Molecular Neuropharmacology in Honor of Harold B. Crasilneck, Ph.D., and the Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology.
