Prof Garry Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine, USA. He is a BRCCH collaborator using CODEX technology to investigate the pathophysiology of COVID-19. He trained with Leonard Herzenberg (for his PhD) and the Nobelist Dr David Baltimore (for postdoctoral work in the first cloning/characterization of NF-B p65/RelA and the development of rapid retroviral production systems). He has published over 220 research articles, is the holder of 20 US patents and has also been honoured as one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University.
Prof Nolan was the first recipient of both the Teal Innovator Award (2012) from the USA’s Department of Defense (a $3.3 million grant for advanced studies in ovarian cancer), and he also received a $3 million FDA BAAA “Bio-agent protection” grant from the FDA for a “Cross-Species Immune System Reference.” He also received an award for Outstanding Research Achievement in 2011 from the Nature Publishing Group for his development of CyTOF applications in the immune system.
Prof Nolan is making new efforts in the study of Ebola, having developed instrument platforms to deploy in the field in Africa to study Ebola samples safely without the need to transport them to overseas labs (funded by a new $3.5 million grant from the FDA). He is an outspoken proponent of translating public investment in basic research to serve public welfare.
Prof Nolan was the founder of Rigel Inc. (NASDAQ: RIGL, BINA) (a genomics computational infrastructure company sold to Roche Diagnostics) and serves on the Boards of Directors of several companies, as well as consulting for other biotechnology companies. DVS Sciences, for which he was Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board, sold to Fluidigm for $207 million (2014) on an investment of $14 million. His areas of research include hematopoiesis, cancer and leukaemia, autoimmunity and inflammation and computational approaches for network and systems immunology.
Prof Nolan’s recent efforts are focused on a single cell analysis advance using a mass spectrometry-flow cytometry hybrid device (CyTOF) and nanoscale imaging with the Multiparameter Ion Beam Imager (MIBI). The approaches use an advanced ion plasma source to determine the levels of tagged reagents bound to cells – enabling a vast increase in the number of parameters that can be measured per cell – either as flow cytometry devices (CyTOF) or imaging platforms for cancer (MIBI). Further developments in imaging are enabled by CODEX – a system that inexpensively converts fluorescence scopes into high dimensional imaging platforms. These efforts will enable a deeper understanding not only of normal immune function, trauma, pathogen infection and other inflammatory events, but also of detailed substructures of leukaemias and solid cancers in order to promote new understandings that will enable better management of disease and clinical outcomes.
