Yulia Rybakova PhD

Senior Research Scientist

Yulia is a cancer biologist with deep mRNA LNP expertise, with a passion for cancer biology as evidenced by her Master’s and Ph.D. work on investigating how cancer growth can be regulated using natural and synthetic antioxidants. Later, interested in bridging biology and engineering to advance cancer treatments she joined the Daniel Anderson Laboratory at the Koch Institute of MIT as a postdoctoral fellow. There she developed an mRNA-based delivery system that induces the expression of therapeutic antibody trastuzumab (Herceptin®) in the liver. In addition, she discovered the antisense lncRNA ASTILCS as an important regulator of human hepatocellular carcinoma cell survival and characterized its molecular mechanism for the first time. Seeking to apply her rigorous training to help cancer patients directly, she joined the Atlas Oncology Diagnostics startup. There, she selected companion diagnostics tests for patient tumor samples profiling and based on the test results advised on precision therapy approaches. The opportunity to work with cancer patients and learn the current standard diagnostic and treatment methods, illuminated for Yulia the deficiency of potential drugs for multiple types of cancers, which motivated her to pursue work on strengthening this clinical niche. At Kernal Bio, she is working on advancing the company’s immuno-oncology pipeline.