Phillip Zamore

Phillip Zamore is an RNA biologist who chairs the RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School and is relocating his lab to McGill University in Montreal, Canada, part of a wave of researchers recruited north amid disruptions to US federal science funding under the second Trump administration.

Zamore attended Harvard University and spent his entire academic career in Massachusetts before this move. He co-founded three Massachusetts biotech companies, including Cambridge-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, which together employ nearly 3,000 people, and his research underpins RNA-based drugs treating high cholesterol, hemophilia, and other rare diseases. He holds 119 patents, has published more than 150 research papers, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.

McGill will provide Zamore with at least 12 million Canadian dollars (about $8.7 million) over eight years, plus additional equipment funding, and at least three members of his lab plan to move with him. He said that after federal funding cuts and delays left him unable to replace departing lab members or take on new graduate students, he concluded he could no longer do his best work, recruit top talent, or guarantee his team's safety in the United States. Nobel laureate Victor Ambros, a UMass colleague, said Zamore's departure reflects the broader toll of the administration's actions on research funding and university stability, though he is not the first UMass Chan researcher to leave under similar pressures.