Frank Slack, Ph.D., is the Shields Warren Mallinckrodt Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School He is also Director of the Harvard Medical School Initiative for RNA Medicine hosted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). He received his B.Sc. from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, before completing his Ph.D. in molecular biology at Tufts University School of Medicine. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow in Gary Ruvkun’s laboratory at HMS, where his work contributed to the 2024 Nobel Prize on microRNAs for Dr. Ruvkun.

Dr. Slack subsequently moved to the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University, where he was a program leader in the Yale Cancer Center and the director of the Yale Center for RNA Science and Medicine.  There he discovered that microRNAs regulate key human oncogenes and have the potential to act as therapeutics.  He also demonstrated the first role for a microRNA in the aging process. 

In 2014, he joined Harvard Medical School/BIDMC. In 2016 he became the founding Director of the HMS Initiative in RNA Medicine.

In 2020 he took on the role of Director of the BIDMC Cancer Research Institute. Dr. Slack was an Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar; received the 2014 Heath Memorial Award from MD Anderson Cancer Center and is an NCI Outstanding Investigator. He is co-founder of three companies in this area, MiraDx, Impilo and 28/7 Rx, and is or has been on the SAB of multiple additional companies, including Mirna Rx, miRagen Rx, Mirecule, Transcode, Alloy.