William Blalock
IGM/CNR-Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute, Italy
- Orcid: 0000-0002-8045-4840
- Publications: 69
- Citations: 4141
- Keywords: inflammation/cellular stress, innate immunity, RNA editing, alternative splicing, phosphorylation, signal transduction, acute leukemia, bone marrow failure disorders, osteosarcoma
Short Bio
- Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, USA. I received the Bachelor of Science in Biology from Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina in May 1991. I received the Master of Science in Biology from East Carolina University in the lab of Henry Stone, PhD (August 1997), where I studied the effects of overexpression of the Newcastle Disease Virus phosphoprotein on viral protein synthesis. In July 2000, I received the Doctor in Philosophy from the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA, where I studied the autocrine transformation of hematopoeitic cells by MEK1, a member of the RAS/RAF/MAPK signal transduction pathway in the laboratory of James McCubrey, PhD. From July 2000 to April 2005, I was post-doc at the University of Florida Shands Cancer Center, Gainesville, Florida, USA, in the laboratory of W. Stratford May, MD, PhD where I was responsible for characterizing the role of PACT/RAX, a regulator of the PKR kinase, in embryonic development and cellular signaling through the generation of knock-out mice and siRNA technology. In May 2005, I moved to Genoa to work as a Senior Scientist in the Department of Innovative Therapy, at the Advanced Biotechnology Center/G. Gaslini Institute under the direction of Prof. Luciano Zardi, as a supervisor of the construction of recombinant vectors and the production of recombinant proteins involved in inflammation. In addition, I was responsible for the isolation and screening of recombinant antibodies to pro-inflammatory proteins. In 2007, I transferred to the Cell Signaling Laboratory, Department of Human Anatomical Sciences at the University of Bologna (under the direction of Prof. Lucio Cocco) where I began studing the role of PKR and stress signaling in the development of hematologic malignancies. In 2011, I became a faculty member of the Institute of Molecular Genetics, Italian National Research Council where I study the role of innate immune/stress signaling in the development and progression cancer.
