Garry P. Nolan (born ) is an American
immunologist,
academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...
,
inventor
An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an id ...
, and
business executive
A business executive is a person responsible for running an organization, although the exact nature of the role varies depending on the organization.
Executives run companies or government agencies. They create plans to help their organizations g ...
. He holds the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor Endowed Chair in the Department of Pathology at
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This ...
.
Nolan founded biotechnology companies, and wrote numerous medical research papers. Since 2022, most of his public appearances have been related to his research in
ufology
Ufology ( ) is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial alien visitors). While there are instances of government, private, and ...
and his belief that
extraterrestrial intelligence
Extraterrestrial intelligence (often abbreviated ETI) refers to hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrial life. The question of whether other inhabited worlds might exist has been debated since ancient times. The modern form of the concept emerge ...
has visited or resides on Earth.
Education
Nolan graduated in 1983 from
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...
with a
BS degree in biology with a specialization in genetics. In 1989, he received his
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in genetics from
Stanford University under
Leonard Herzenberg before doing post-doctoral work with Nobel laureate
David Baltimore
David Baltimore (born March 7, 1938) is an American biologist, university administrator, and 1975 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Tech ...
at
MIT,
where he co-developed the 293T-based rapid retroviral production system and the cloning of the NF-κB p65/ RelA DNA regulatory factor.
Research
His areas of research include autoimmunity and inflammation,
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bl ...
and
leukemia
Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ...
,
hematopoiesis
Haematopoiesis (, from Greek , 'blood' and 'to make'; also hematopoiesis in American English; sometimes also h(a)emopoiesis) is the formation of blood cellular components. All cellular blood components are derived from haematopoietic stem cells ...
, and using computation for network and
systems immunology Systems immunology is a research field under systems biology that uses mathematical approaches and computational methods to examine the interactions within cellular and molecular networks of the immune system. The immune system has been thoroughly ...
.
He is perhaps best known for his early work in the
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
lab at the
Whitehead Institute
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research institute located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States that is dedicated to improving human health through basic biomedical research. It was founded as a fiscally indepen ...
, where he worked on developing 293T cell rapid
retroviral production for
gene therapy
Gene therapy is a medical field which focuses on the genetic modification of cells to produce a therapeutic effect or the treatment of disease by repairing or reconstructing defective genetic material. The first attempt at modifying human D ...
. Nearly all gene therapy using retroviruses or
lentivirus
''Lentivirus'' is a genus of retroviruses that cause chronic and deadly diseases characterized by long incubation periods, in humans and other mammalian species. The genus includes the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. Le ...
es is done using
293
__NOTOC__
Year 293 ( CCXCIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. In the Roman Empire, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Diocletian and Maximian (or, less frequently ...
-based
cell lines
An immortalised cell line is a population of cells from a multicellular organism which would normally not proliferate indefinitely but, due to mutation, have evaded normal cellular senescence and instead can keep undergoing division. The cell ...
per the rapid retroviral protocol. He also developed cloning of the
RELA transcription factor, a key regulator in immune response genes and a principal cellular component that
HIV
The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immu ...
uses to replicate itself. Other major projects on which he has worked include phospho-flow signaling development (now licensed to
Becton-Dickinson), FACS-gal (owned by
Thermo Fisher),
CyTOF multiparameter analysis, split-poll based Quantum Barcoding Technology (owned by ScaleBio), algorithmic approaches to analyzing complex single-cell datasets, proof that the
NFAT transcription factor is both a
REL protein and a key determinant in HIV replication, and development of
multiplexing
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a ...
technologies for
tissue analysis, such as MIBI and CODEX, and the algorithmic approaches needed to understand them. As of 2022, his lab works on several
FDA-supported projects for
Ebola
Ebola, also known as Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and other primates, caused by ebolaviruses. Symptoms typically start anywhere between two days and three weeks after bec ...
,
influenza
Influenza, commonly known as "the flu", is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These symptom ...
,
Zika virus
''Zika virus'' (ZIKV; pronounced or ) is a member of the virus family '' Flaviviridae''. It is spread by daytime-active '' Aedes'' mosquitoes, such as ''A. aegypti'' and ''A. albopictus''. Its name comes from the Ziika Forest of Uganda, wh ...
, and
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickl ...
, as well as continuing Nolan's immune-tumor interface in many human cancers.
Companies
In 1996, Nolan founded the
biotechnology
Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used b ...
company Rigel, Inc. with colleagues Donald Payan, James Gower, Thomas Raffin, and Ronald Garren in
South San Francisco. In 2003, he established the biotech company Nodality, Inc., which develops "personalized tests for cancer and autoimmune diseases."
Big data company BINA Technology was founded in 2010 and bought out by
Roche in 2014 for $107 million. In 2011, he founded Apprise, which focused on cell analysis using
split-pool technology. Nolan later sold Apprise to Roche, with whom he co-founded another startup, Scale Bio, which also focuses on split-pool technology. Along with three postdoctoral researchers, Sean Bendall, Michael Angelo, and Harris Feinberg, Nolan founded Ionpath in 2014. This company is active in spatial
proteomics
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, with many functions such as the formation of structural fibers of muscle tissue, enzymatic digestion of food, or synthesis and replication of DNA. In ...
. In 2015, with postdocs Yury Goltsev and Nikolay Samusik, he founded Akoya Biosciences, which commercializes Nolan's co-Detection by indexing (CODEX) technology.
Ufology and belief in extraterrestrial contact
In 2012, Nolan began analysis on the
Atacama skeleton
The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in th ...
, a corpse from
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...
that ufologists had speculated to be of alien origin, but which he later revealed to be a
mummified
A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay fu ...
human
stillbirth
Stillbirth is typically defined as fetal death at or after 20 or 28 weeks of pregnancy, depending on the source. It results in a baby born without signs of life. A stillbirth can result in the feeling of guilt or grief in the mother. The ter ...
with genetic bone defects and gene mutation causing deformity.
According to Nolan, he was approached by "some people representing the government and an aerospace corporation to help them understand the medical harm that had come to some individuals, related to supposed interactions with an anomalous craft" because "they were interested in the kinds of blood analysis that my lab can do".
Nolan is the lead author a study about
materials associated with UFOs.
In August 2022, Nolan appeared on Fox News' ''Tucker Carlson Tonight
''Tucker Carlson Tonight'' is an American talk show and current affairs program hosted by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on the television network Fox News. The show premiered in November 2016 and includes political commentary, monol ...
'' show and discussed his claims of UAP-related research in an hour long interview. During a May 2023 SALT iConnections conference in Manhattan for an interview with Alex Klokus titled "The Pentagon, Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Crashed UFOs", Nolan claimed that some governments have retrieved artifacts from extraterrestrial craft, said that he gives the probability as "100 percent" that extraterrestrials have not only visited Earth but have been visiting earth for a long time, and speculated that what has visited earth are simply "emissaries" and possibly drones. As ''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' columnist Ezra Klein interviewed journalist and UFO author Leslie Kean Leslie Kean is an investigative journalist and author who is most notable for books about Unidentified flying object, UFOs and the afterlife.
Background
In the late nineteen-nineties, after a visit to Burma to interview political prisoners, she stu ...
in June 2023, Kean told Klein that Nolan "knows David Grusch
In 2023, United States Air Force (USAF) officer and former intelligence official David Grusch was interviewed by various media outlets and testified in a U.S. House of Representatives congressional hearing. Grusch claimed that he had conversat ...
very well and vouches for him".
Nolan co-founded The Sol Foundation with sociocultural anthropologist Peter Skafish on August 15, 2023.
Awards and honors
* National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
Fellowship (1988)
* National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U ...
Fellowship (1990-1992)
* Burroughs Wellcome Fund New Investigator Award (1996)
* United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...
Teal Innovator Award (2012)
References
External links
Garry Nolan
at Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...
Garry Nolan is interviewed by journalist Ross Coulthart in December 2023
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nolan, Garry
Living people
Stanford University faculty
American pathologists
Ufologists
Year of birth missing (living people)
Cornell University alumni