Craig Mello

In his October 2015 acceptance speech for a China Friendship Award from Premier Li Keqiang Mello said,

Mello is involved in several RNAi-based biotechnology companies. He is a co-founder of RXi Pharmaceuticals where he Chairs the Scientific Advisory Board. Recently he joined the Technology Advisory Board of Beeologics, a company focused on development of RNAi products for honeybee health and various veterinary and agricultural applications, which, according to Mello, "could very well be the first company to obtain FDA approval for an RNAi therapy". In September 2011 Monsanto acquired Beeologics.

In 2006, Mello and Fire received the Nobel Prize for work that began in 1998, when Mello and Fire along with their colleagues (SiQun Xu, Mary Montgomery, Stephen Kostas, and Sam Driver) published a paper in the journal Nature detailing how tiny snippets of RNA fool the cell into destroying the gene's messenger RNA (mRNA) before it can produce a protein - effectively shutting specific genes down.

In the annual Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scientific Meeting held on November 13, 2006 in Ashburn, Virginia, Dr. Mello recounted the phone call that he received announcing that he had won the prize. He recalls that it was shortly after 4:30 am and he had just finished checking on his daughter, and returned to his bedroom. The phone rang (or rather the green light was blinking) and his wife told him not to answer, as it was a prank call. Upon questioning his wife, she revealed that it had rung while he was out of the room and someone was playing a bad joke on them by saying that he had won the Nobel prize. When he told her that they were actually announcing the Nobel prize winners on this very day, he said "her jaw dropped." He answered the phone, and the voice on the other end told him to get dressed, and that in half an hour his life was about to change.

Mello attended the University of Colorado, Boulder for graduate studies in molecular, cellular and developmental biology with David Hirsh. After Hirsh decided to take a position in industry, Mello moved to Harvard University where he could continue his research with Dan Stinchcomb. Mello completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1990. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the laboratory of Dr. James Priess.

Mello attended Fairfax High School (Fairfax, Virginia). After receiving his high school diploma, Mello attended Brown University as a biochemistry and molecular biology major. Kenneth Miller, his cell biology instructor, recounted that although he did not receive the "best grades of the class," he was intensely curious and thus a "real pain in the ass." Mello would never let Miller finish a lecture without asking him for more references, questions, or evidence for concepts discussed in the lecture. He received his Sc.B. from Brown in 1982.

Craig Cameron Mello (born October 18, 1960) is an American biologist and professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Andrew Z. Fire, for the discovery of RNA interference. This research was conducted at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and published in 1998. Mello has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 2000.

Mello was born in New Haven, Connecticut on October 18, 1960. He was the third child of James and Sally Mello. His father, James Mello, was a paleontologist and his mother, Sally Mello, was an artist. His paternal grandparents immigrated to the US from the Portuguese islands of Azores. His parents met while attending Brown University and were the first children in their respective families to attend college. His grandparents on both sides withdrew from school as teenagers to work for their families. James Mello completed his Ph.D. in paleontology from Yale University in 1962. The Mello family moved to Falls Church in northern Virginia so that James could take a position with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Washington, DC. He was raised as Roman Catholic.