Diana Remy Dou

Diana R. Dou, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Integrative Immunobiology at Duke University. She received her B.S. degree in Biology from Caltech and her PhD in Molecular Biology from UCLA. She was introduced early to RNA biology as an undergraduate researcher studying synthetic modifications and nonviral, nanoparticle-based delivery methods of RNA in Dr. Mark E. Davis’s and Dr. Scott E. Fraser’s labs at Caltech and developed a lasting interest in immune diseases while investigating immune defenses in viral infections as an NIAID Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) postbaccalaureate researcher in Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s lab. In her doctoral thesis work with Dr. Hanna Mikkola, she sought to understand the developmental patterning of the hematopoietic stem cell (HSC), the multipotent progenitor for the immune system, and showed that medial HOXA cluster gene expression demarcates definitive human HSCs. During her postdoctoral work with Dr. Howard Chang at Stanford, she discovered a novel role for the Xist ribonucleoprotein (RNP) as a driver for autoimmunity underlying the sex-biased female preponderance for developing autoimmune diseases. 

Dr. Dou is currently a Whitehead Scholar and NIAMS K99/R00 Fellow. She was also a past recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) and ISEH New Investigator Dirk van Bekkum Award. Her lab’s research focus is to understand how immune tolerance deteriorates into autoreactivity and disease from a lncRNA and epigenetic gene regulation perspective.