Primary Job Title Founder & Director, Molecular Biology Primary Organization Orna Therapeutics
Location Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Regions Greater Boston Area, East Coast, New England Gender Male Also Known As R. Alexander Wesselhoeft
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Alex is a Founder, former Board Director, and Director of Molecular Biology at Orna where he leads the development of Orna’s synthetic circular RNA (oRNA) platform. An inventor, scientist, and entrepreneur, he earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he created the first effective oRNAs that would become Orna’s
foundational technology. His work led to two key publications that substantiated the field of synthetic circular RNA and enabled their use for investigative therapeutic applications. Alex co-founded Orna with Raffaella Squilloni to develop oRNA into the next generation of long RNA therapeutics. Earlier in his career, Alex worked in the laboratory of Tyler Jacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study the contribution of stem cells to tumor growth. He obtained his B.S. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he investigated gamma-delta T cell function.
