Muthiah (Mano) Manoharan, PhD

Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Dr. Muthiah (“Mano”) Manoharan serves as the Senior Vice President of Innovation Chemistry, Member of the Scientific Advisory Board and a Distinguished Scientist at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Dr. Manoharan joined Alnylam in 2003. He built the chemistry group at Alnylam and pioneered the discovery of N-acetyl galactosamine (GalNAc) conjugated siRNAs and lipid nanoparticles platform (LNPs) for human therapeutics based on RNA interference (RNAi). There is one approved RNAi therapeutic (ONPATTRO or patisiran) from Alnylam and eight more are in advanced clinical pipeline. He was the former Executive Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Isis (Ionis) Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leading biotechnology company focused on antisense oligonucleotide-based therapeutics where he had a 12-year tenure and contributed to the discovery of two approved antisense oligonucleotide drugs, vitravene and mipomersen. With a distinguished career as a world-leading chemist in the areas of oligonucleotide chemical modifications, conjugation chemistry, and other delivery platforms, Dr. Manoharan is an author of more than 200 publications (nearly 37,000 citations with an h-index of 85 and an i10-index of 329)  and over 400 abstracts, as well as the inventor of over 200 issued U.S. patents. He was the recipient of the M. L. Wolfrom award of the ACS Carbohydrate Chemistry Division in 2007.