Leonard Lipovich, a pioneer in long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) biology of human disease, earned his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle.
He completed postdoctoral training at the Genome Institute of Singapore, where he discovered the first mammalian lncRNA functional in stem cell pluripotency.
Subsequently, while on the faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, he was the first to empirically reveal unexpected ribosomal translation of short open reading frames from lncRNAs in human cells.
In 2014, he received a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award for his work on how primate-specific lncRNAs, which are not conserved in mammalian evolution, contribute to human breast cancer etiology.
His current focus is on identifying, and validating in the laboratory, lncRNAs from genome-wide association studies and personalized genome sequencing as novel causes of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic disorders, and targeting them with personalized, RNAi-based therapeutics.