Rate My Professor Mandë Holford

Mandë Holford is Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology in Harvard University's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Malacology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. She joined Harvard in July 2025, following her tenure as Professor of Chemistry at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she also held scientific appointments at the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medicine. Holford received her BS in mathematics and chemistry from York College of The City University of New York in 1997 and her PhD in chemical biology from The Rockefeller University in 2003. She completed postdoctoral research at the University of Utah, the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany, and the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in France between 2005 and 2008.

Holford's research explores venoms and venomous animals as agents of molecular evolution and sources of therapeutic innovations, particularly in marine mollusks such as predatory snails, squids, octopuses, and cuttlefish. Her laboratory uses evolutionary frameworks to identify and characterize disulfide-rich venom peptides for potential treatments targeting pain, cancer, and other diseases, including those affecting dysregulated ion channels in liver tumors. She develops genetically tractable invertebrate venom gland systems to investigate rapidly evolving genes, gene expression, and physiological functions. Holford's contributions include advancing venom-derived drug candidates, such as those from terebrid snails for liver cancer, paralleling established therapies like the cone snail-derived painkiller Prialt and Gila monster venom-inspired Ozempic. Key publications include "Targeting Dysregulated Ion Channels in Liver Tumors with Venom Peptides" (Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, 2023), "Phylogenomics of Neogastropoda: the backbone hidden in the bush" (Systematic Biology, 2024), and "A Proposed Unified, Scalable Platform for Integrative Research on Venomous Species" (GigaScience, 2025). She has earned distinction through election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2025), the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2023, the first for a CUNY researcher), NSF CAREER Award (2012), Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship. Holford co-founded Killer Snails, LLC, an award-winning EdTech company, and 2030STEM to advance STEM education and inclusion for underrepresented professionals, while overseeing Harvard's aquatic lab for venomous cephalopods.