Carol Greider, PhD

2017 Alma Dea Morani Awardee

Carol Greider, PhD, is Professor & Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University.

In 1984, working together with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, she discovered telomerase, an enzyme that maintains telomeres, or chromosome ends. In 1988, Dr. Greider went to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where, as an independent Cold Spring Harbor Fellow, she cloned and characterized the RNA component of telomerase. In 1990, Dr. Greider was appointed as an assistant investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, followed later by appointment to Investigator in 1994. She expanded the focus of her telomere research to include the role of telomere length in cellular senescence, cell death and in cancer.  In 1997, Dr. Greider moved her laboratory to the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 2003 she was appointed as the Daniel Nathans Professor and Director of the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. At Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Greider’s group continued to study the biochemistry of telomerase and determined the secondary structure of the human telomerase RNA. In addition, she characterized the loss of telomere function in mice, which allowed an understanding of human’s short telomere diseases such as bone marrow and other stem cell failure diseases.

Carol Greider, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of telomerase, an enzyme that plays an important role in the division of cells, and which has a real potential to fight cancer and age-related diseases as well. Greider also won the 2006 Albert Lasker Award, one of the most respected prizes for work in the sciences.