Dr. Anita Seto PhD

Anita G. Seto, Ph.D., is the Manager of Translational Science at miRagen Therapeutics, Inc. miRagen is developing innovative microRNA-based therapies to improve human health. Dr. Seto is responsible for the development and implementation of translational biomarker strategies for miRagen’s early clinical development programs. Therapeutic areas of focus are hematological malignancies and fibrosis. She is applying translational research to design and execute on clinical studies that are rich in molecular and cellular endpoints to inform on drug mechanism of action.

Prior to joining miRagen, Dr. Seto was a Scientist at Thermo Scientific, Dharmacon Products. In this role, she was responsible for developing microRNA-based microarray diagnostics and tools for microRNA research. She played a key role in the commercial launch of the microRNA diagnostic platform.

Dr. Seto was a Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellow with Professor Robert Kingston at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Her research objective was to decipher the role of small RNAs in transcriptional regulation, with an emphasis on gene silencing through chromatin structure and modification. To this end, she co-discovered a new class of small RNA silencers, the piwi-interacting RNAs.

Dr. Seto earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in the laboratory of Professor Thomas Cech at the University of Colorado at Boulder. As a graduate student, she discovered that the Sm protein complex, known to be a key structural component of splicing small nuclear RNA complexes, is important for the activity of the budding yeast telomerase RNA-protein complex. She also discovered important structural elements necessary for telomerase RNA function. Dr. Seto received a B.S. in Chemistry from Stanford University.