Genomics Rooftop: The RNA Whisperers of Santa Cruz
Imagine your body as a giant city. Inside every cell, there’s a factory—tiny, invisible, but astonishingly busy. Each one runs on a master instruction manual called DNA. But here’s the catch: the workers can’t read the original manual. It’s locked in the boss’s office (the nucleus). So, the factory makes photocopies—called RNA—and sends them to the factory floor, where proteins get built.
Now imagine those photocopies start getting smudged, mistranslated, or intercepted by bad actors. That’s where disease begins.
This is the world Jeremy Sanford and his team at UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Molecular Biology of RNA live in. They’re not just scientists—they’re the editors, translators, and sometimes the hackers of life’s instruction manuals. Their mission? Figure out how messages between DNA and proteins get corrupted—and how to fix them.
The Three Fronts of the Battle
Sanford’s lab fights on three fronts:
Rare Genetic Diseases – Some people are born with tiny RNA glitches that cause massive problems. Sanford’s team is developing RNA-based drugs that could one day correct those glitches. One of their targets? Hemophilia A.
Cancer – Certain cancers are like rogue factories that rewrite their own instruction manuals. The lab discovered a small molecule inhibitor that shuts down an RNA-binding protein cancer cells depend on—like pulling the plug on their communication system.
Global Health – Around 650 million people suffer from parasitic infections caused by nematodes and trypanosomes. These parasites rely on RNA processes unique to them, and Sanford’s team found ways to exploit that. They’re building a new generation of RNA-targeted drugs that could one day clear infections and even protect crops.
The Pandemic Pivot
When COVID-19 hit, most labs shut down. Sanford did the opposite. He co-founded the UCSC Molecular Diagnostics Lab to speed up testing for Santa Cruz County. Then came SummerBio, a company that processed over 20 million COVID tests with lightning-fast turnaround and costs 10–20 times lower than competitors. In startup terms, that’s not just innovation—it’s disruption in a lab coat.
What They’re Learning Now
The team’s recent papers explore how RNA messages are edited and managed. One shows how a protein called IGF2BP3 rearranges the way microRNAs interact with other RNAs—basically, it’s like discovering a new kind of punctuation mark that changes the meaning of a sentence. Another dives into how errors in RNA splicing lead to disease, and how better databases can predict these mistakes before they happen.
It’s complicated work. But at its core, it’s about communication—the silent, molecular kind that happens billions of times per second inside every person reading this.
Why It Matters
If Sanford’s team is right, we’re on the edge of a new kind of medicine: one that doesn’t just treat symptoms but rewrites faulty messages at their source.
And that’s the big idea here. Biology isn’t just chemistry—it’s information technology. RNA is the code, and Jeremy Sanford’s lab? They’re the coders debugging life itself.
Meet the team
If you want to take this out of the abstract and into real life, you can meet Jeremy and the UCSC team at the Genomics Rooftop Mixer on October 28, 2025. Ask them how they debug life’s code, what keeps them up at night, and where RNA medicine goes next.
