Biology Education

Dr. Simon has worked in drug discovery for more than 20 years, most recently focusing her efforts on the preclinical development of RNA-targeting therapeutics for the treatment of CNS disorders at start-up companies such as PepGen and Aliada. There, her work focused on characterizing the uptake, mechanism of action, and biodistribution of current and next-generation compounds. Dr. Simon previously led the in vitro biology efforts at Atalanta Therapeutics, where her team was responsible for compound screening, target validation, lead candidate selection, ex vivo tissue analysis for compound efficacy and DMPK analysis. Before that, she spent a very diverse 18 years in rare disease research at Sanofi-Genzyme. During that time, her work primarily focused on the biochemistry of pulmonary fibrosis, solid tumor and hematologic oncology, hemoglobinopathies, and cystic fibrosis. Kailene received her B.S. in Biology from Providence College, her M.S. in Biology from Tufts University and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Simon teaches BIOL 2024 Gene and RNA Therapeutic Development.