Steven Dowdy

Professor, University of California San Diego

Dr. Steven Dowdy is a Professor of Cellular & Molecular Medicine at UCSD School of Medicine. He received his PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of California Irvine with Prof. Eric Stanbridge and was a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Whitehead Institute at MIT with Prof. Bob Weinberg. In 1994, Dr. Dowdy joined Washington University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1994-2012). He moved his lab to UCSD in 2001. His early research focused on understanding the molecular basis of G1 cell cycle deregulation during oncogenesis by RB, p16 and cyclin:Cdk complexes, determining that cyclin D:Cdk4 complexes activated RB by mono-phosphorylation. His more recent work focused on the synthetic chemistry and delivery of siRNAs to treat cancer, including the first synthesis of bioreversible, charge neutralizing phosphotriester RNAi prodrugs. His current work is focused on addressing the rate-limiting step of endosomal escape that impedes delivery of all RNA therapeutics by synthesis of novel endosomal escape domains. Dr. Dowdy sits on five biotech Science Advisory Boards, was previously an elected board member of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society (OTS) (2015-2021) and is co-founder of Clear Skies Bio, which is focused on RNA delivery.