Dr. Doug Dellinger, PhD

CEO and Co-Founder at Cirena

Speaker

Doug Dellinger earned his Ph.D. under Marvin Caruthers, focusing on phosphorus chemistry, his work became fundamental to modern phosphoramidite monomer production. Doug contributed to DNA and RNA synthesis innovations at Ionis Pharmaceuticals, MetaSense Technologies and led research at Hewlett-Packard/Agilent Laboratories for three decades, developing the first ink-jet synthesized DNA arrays. He invented several phosphorus internucleotide bond modifications, including the PACE modification for enhanced DNA/RNA stability in vivo. With Caruthers, he published a breakthrough RNA synthesis method in 2011 allowing for high quality ultra-long RNA manufacturing. His group was first to chemically synthesize single guide RNAs, introduce modified sgRNAs, and pioneer the synthesis of pegRNAs for prime editing. In 2024, Doug and Marv co-founded Cirena, Inc., dedicated to producing high quality long RNA, where he serves as CEO.