Dr. George Calin, Professor in the Experimental Therapeutics and Leukemia Departments at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was the first to discover the link between microRNAs and human cancers, a finding considered as a milestone in microRNA research history. His research focuses on the roles of microRNAs and other non-coding RNAs in cancer initiation and progression and in immune disorders, as well as the mechanisms of cancer predisposition linked to non-codingRNAs.
He received both his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at Carol Davila University of Medicine in Bucharest, Romania. After working cytogenetics as an undergraduate student with Dr. Dragos Stefanescu in Bucharest, he completed a cancer genomics training in Dr. Massimo Negrini’s laboratory at University of Ferrara, Italy. In 2000 he became a postdoctoral fellow at Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, PA and while working in Dr. Carlo Croce laboratory Dr. Calin had his microRNA breakthrough.