Department of Internal Medicine

Cardiovascular Medicine Faculty

Paloma H. Giangrande, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Dr. Giangrande's research interests include developing RNA-based therapeutics to modulate cellular pathways underlying pathological cell proliferation in the setting of cancer and cardiovascular disease. One area of Dr. Giangrande’s lab focuses on selecting RNA aptamers to receptors expressed on the surface of target-cells with SELEX (Systemic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential Enrichment) for the purpose of 1) modulating receptor function and/or 2) delivering therapeutic molecules (e.g. siRNAs, antagomirs, drugs) into specific cell types. A second interest of the Giangrande lab is to use genomic/proteomic methodologies to acquire important insights into the mechanisms of pathological cell proliferation. In addition to providing useful mechanistic information, this knowledge will be used to identify novel membrane proteins that can be targeted with therapeutic RNAs for treating cancer or pathological vascular hyperplasia.

Honors, Awards, and Organizations

Phi Beta Kappa
Presidential Biological Scholars Award-University of Iowa
AFLAC Award- American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
American Society for Gene Therapy
Endocrine Society

Paloma Giangrande, Ph.D.

Graduate School:
Duke University

Postdoctoral Fellowship:
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Duke University Medical School

Recent Publications

McNamara, J.O. 2nd, Andrechek, E.R., Wang, Y., Viles, K.D., Rempel, R.E., Gilboa, E., Sullenger, B.A., Giangrande, P.H. Cell type-specific delivery of siRNAs with aptamer-siRNA chimeras. Nat Biotechnol. 24(8):1005-15, 2006.
Mi, J., Zhang, X., Giangrande, P.H., McNamara, J.O. 2nd, Nimjee, S.M., Sarraf-Yazdi, S., Sullenger, B.A., Clary, B.M. Targeted inhibition of alphavbeta3 integrin with an RNA aptamer impairs endothelial cell growth and survival. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 338(2):956-63, 2005.
Zhu, W., Giangrande, P.H., Nevins, J.R.. Temporal control of cell cycle gene expression mediated by E2F transcription factors. Cell Cycle. 4(5):633-6, 2005.
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