Samuel Gunderson

Dr. Gunderson is the co-founder of Ceptur Therapeutics and a member of its Board of Directors. Together with Dr. Rafal Gorczniak, he is the inventor of the Company’s U1 Adaptor gene silencing technology. A Professor of Molecular Biology at Rutgers University, Dr. Gunderson has made major contributions in the field of gene expression regulation at the level of transcription, RNA splicing, and polyadenylation. He was the first to discover a novel mode of gene regulation where the 3′ end of a gene (the polyA site) rather than the 5′ end (transcription initiation and promoter elements) decides whether that gene will be expressed; the discovery involved demonstrating how the U1A and U1 snRNP splicing factors regulate gene expression by inhibiting 3′-end formation (polyadenylation) of pre-mRNA of specific genes, including of the U1A gene itself as part of an autoregulatory loop. This mechanism of polyadenylation inhibition forms the basis for Ceptur’s U1 Adaptor gene silencing technology. Dr. Gunderson earned his B.Sc. in genetics and cell biology from the University of Minnesota and his Ph.D. in genetics under the supervision of Dr. Richard Burgess at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He further completed his postdoctoral training at the European Molecular Biology Lab, Heidelberg, Germany.