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Leonard Lipovich Biography Academic Appointments Professional Education Teaching Honors and Awards Publications Membership of Professional Bodies/ Associations Research Interests Clinical and Community service
Professor of Basic Medical Sciences

Leonard Lipovich

Leonard.Lipovich@mbru.ac.ae +971 4 383 8716

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.

Academic Appointments

2020 - Present

Professor, Basic Medical Sciences Department

College of Medicine, Mohammed Bin Rashid University, Dubai, UAE.

2007-2020

Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor

Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics (CMMG), Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA.

2006-2007

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Information Systems

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

2006-2007

Principal Investigator (Computational and Mathematical Biology)

Genome Institute of Singapore, Singapore.

Professional Education

2006

Postdoctoral

Genome Institute of Singapore, Singapore.

2003

PhD

University of Washington - Seattle, USA.

1998

BA cum laude (Genetics and Development)

Cornell University, USA.

Teaching

  • Teaching Human Genomics and Non-Coding RNA Biology to undergraduate students.
  • Teaching Human Genomics and Non-Coding RNA Biology to postgraduate students.
  • Mentoring undergraduate, Masters, and PhD students (research projects, dissertations).
  • Teaching the UCSC Genome Browser to peers, clinicians, postdocs, and students.

Honors and Awards

2019 - 2021

Founding Co-Chair, IEEE-BIBM annual Long Non-Coding RNA Workshop

MBRU

2018 - 2019

The Charles H. Gershenson Distinguished Faculty Fellowship

Wayne State University

2016

Golden Tiger Award (category: Exceptional Contributions)

CHARGE Consortium

2015

Chair, International Scientific Meeting on LncRNA

The Royal Society, U.K.

2015

Chair, Keystone Symposium on LncRNA

(with 2 Nobel laureates among my guest speakers)

2014 - 2019

NIH Director’s New Innovator Award

2014

Invited speaker

Non-Coding RNA: from Basic Mechanisms to Cancer (Heidelberg)

2013 - 2014

Visiting faculty fellow / invited instructor

University of New South Wales (Sydney)

2012

Invited speaker

AACR Conference: Non-Coding RNAs (organizer: Phil Sharp)

2011

Invited session co-chair

International Congress of Human Genetics, Montreal

2010

Speaker and conference award recipient

HHMI, “From the RNA World to the Clinic”

Publications

Gestational Age Dependence of the Maternal Circulating Long Non-Coding RNA Transcriptome During Normal Pregnancy Highlights Antisense and Pseudogene Transcripts

View on PubMed

Dietary Patterns and Associated Microbiome Changes that Promote Oncogenesis

View on PubMed

miRCOVID-19: Potential Targets of Human miRNAs in SARS-CoV-2 for RNA-Based Drug Discovery

View on PubMed

A Long Non-coding RNA, LOC157273, Is an Effector Transcript at the Chromosome 8p23.1- PPP1R3B Metabolic Traits and Type 2 Diabetes Risk Locus

View on PubMed

Primate-specific oestrogen-responsive long non-coding RNAs regulate proliferation and viability of human breast cancer cells

View on PubMed

Activity-dependent human brain coding/noncoding gene regulatory networks

View on PubMed

Long noncoding RNAs are rarely translated in two human cell lines

View on PubMed

Conserved long noncoding RNAs transcriptionally regulated by Oct4 and Nanog modulate pluripotency in mouse embryonic stem cells

View on PubMed

Complex Loci in human and mouse genomes

View on PubMed

Primate-specific endogenous cis-antisense transcription in the human 5q31 protocadherin gene cluster

View on PubMed

View all on PubMed

Membership of Professional Bodies/ Associations

  • ~ 10 NIH grant review panels (study sections)
  • UK MRC, Florida Dept of Health, Pennsylvania Dept of Health grant review panels (study sections)
  • IEEE BIBM LNCRNA Workshop – program committee member and co-chair.
  • CHARGE Consortium (Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology).
  • ENCODE Consortium (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements).
  • FANTOM Consortium (Functional Annotation of Mammalian cDNA).

Research Interests

  • Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) genes that cause human diseases.
  • Identification of disease-causing lncRNAs from Genome-Wide Association Studies, Whole-Genome Sequencing, and high-throughput cellular assays.
  • Experimental validation of lncRNA functions in human cancers, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic disorders.
  • Evolution-function relationships and phenotypes of primate-specific lncRNAs.
  • Host-pathogen RNA-RNA interactions, including those of human endogenous cellular RNAs with viral RNA genomes.
  • Targeting lncRNAs with individualized RNAi-based therapeutics for precision medicine.

Clinical and Community service

  • Chairing numerous conference sessions and entire international conferences in the lncRNA field and related biological fields.
  • Administration and service in 3 universities.
  • Teaching applied bioinformatics tools to clinicians, postdocs, and medical students.
MBR University
Building 14, Dubai Healthcare City
P.O Box 505055, Dubai UAE
800 MBRU (6278)
info@mbru.ac.ae
MBR University
Building 14, Dubai Healthcare City
P.O Box 505055, Dubai UAE
800 MBRU (6278)
info@mbru.ac.ae
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