Biography
Before beginning her career as a scientist,Vallabh studied and practiced law,having graduated from Harvard Law School and Swarthmore College. [4] In 2010,her mother,Kanmi,suddenly developed profound and aggressive dementia that killed her six months after symptoms first developed. An autopsy revealed that her mother had died from fatal familial insomnia,an incurable genetic disorder that causes misfolded proteins to destroy the brain. A blood sample from Vallabh herself revealed she had inherited the causal mutation. [5]
The revelation inspired Vallabh and her husband,Eric Vallabh Minikel,to retrain as biomedical scientists with the goal of saving her life. [6] [7] She received a Doctorate of Philosophy from Harvard in 2019 and became a senior leader at the Broad Institute prion lab. [8]
In 2023,she earned the Paper of the Year Award from the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society. [9]
As of 2025,prion diseases remain invariably fatal. However,research published by Vallabh and her husband in 2025 may represent the first steps towards treatment,having prolonged the lives of rats with prion disease by 52%. [10] [11]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
