Another confession by Alberto Kornblit | At the Brazilian Academy of Sciences

In view of his professional and scientific contributions, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences appointed Alberto Kornblit, Conicet researcher and group leader at the Institute of Physiology, Molecular Biology and Neurosciences (Ifibyne, Conicet-UBA), as a corresponding member. “I feel very proud to join the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. It reaffirms the existing relations between the two brotherly countries with highly developed and distinguished scientific communities around the world,” Kornblit said.

The Brazilian Academy of Sciences is an institution founded in 1916 that brings together leading researchers from Brazil (as full members) and from abroad (as corresponding members).

Kornblit’s lab has discovered the molecular processes that play a key role in alternative splicing, a molecular mechanism that allows the same gene to store instructions for making different proteins. Studying this mechanism opens the way to understanding many diseases and exploring new treatments.

In June last year, a study conducted by Kornbliht was on the cover of the prestigious journal Cell describing the beneficial results of exploring treatments that achieve a greater therapeutic effect in people with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a serious genetic disease that afflicts Argentina. It affects about 400 boys and girls and one in every 10,000 births worldwide.

Kornbliht, who is also UBA Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences (FCEN), graduated as a biologist from the FECN at UBA (1977), completed his PhD in Chemistry under the supervision of Hector Torres at the Campomar Foundation (1980) and obtained his PhD at the University of Oxford ( 1981-1984) in the United Kingdom.

Researcher Conisit is also a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences, and an associate member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.