Garry P. Nolan (born c. 1961) is an American immunologist, academic, inventor, and business executive. He holds the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor Endowed Chair in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine.[1][2] Nolan founded biotechnology companies, and wrote numerous medical research papers. Since 2022, most of his public appearances have been related to his research in ufology and his belief that extraterrestrial intelligence has visited or resides on Earth.
Nolan graduated in 1983 from Cornell University with a BS degree in biology with a specialization in genetics. In 1989, he received his PhD in genetics from Stanford University under Leonard Herzenberg before doing post-doctoral work with Nobel laureate David BaltimoreatMIT, where he co-developed the 293T-based rapid retroviral production system and the cloning of the NF-κB p65/ RelA DNA regulatory factor.[2]
His areas of research include autoimmunity and inflammation, cancer and leukemia, hematopoiesis, and using computation for network and systems immunology.[2][3] He is perhaps best known for his early work in the Baltimore lab at the Whitehead Institute, where he worked on developing 293T cell rapid retroviral production for gene therapy.[4] Nearly all gene therapy using retroviruses or lentiviruses is done using 293-based cell lines per the rapid retroviral protocol. He also developed cloning of the RELA transcription factor, a key regulator in immune response genes and a principal cellular component that HIV uses to replicate itself. Other major projects on which he has worked include phospho-flow signaling development (now licensed to Becton-Dickinson), FACS-gal (owned by Thermo Fisher), CyTOFmultiparameter analysis, split-poll based Quantum Barcoding Technology (owned by ScaleBio), algorithmic approaches to analyzing complex single-cell datasets,[5] proof that the NFAT transcription factor is both a REL protein and a key determinant in HIV replication,[6][7] and development of multiplexing technologies for tissue analysis, such as MIBI and CODEX, and the algorithmic approaches needed to understand them.[8][9] As of 2022, his lab works on several FDA-supported projects for Ebola,[10]influenza, Zika virus, and COVID-19, as well as continuing Nolan's immune-tumor interface in many human cancers.
In 1996, Nolan founded the biotechnology company Rigel, Inc. with colleagues Donald Payan, James Gower, Thomas Raffin, and Ronald Garren in South San Francisco.[11] In 2003, he established the biotech company Nodality, Inc., which develops "personalized tests for cancer and autoimmune diseases."[12][2]Big data company BINA Technology was founded in 2010 and bought out by Roche in 2014 for $107 million.[13][14][15] In 2011, he founded Apprise, which focused on cell analysis using split-pool technology. Nolan later sold Apprise to Roche, with whom he co-founded another startup, Scale Bio, which also focuses on split-pool technology.[16] Along with three postdocs, Sean Bendall, Michael Angelo, and Harris Feinberg, Nolan founded Ionpath in 2014. This company is active in spatial proteomics.[17][18] In 2015, with postdocs Yury Goltsev and Nikolay Samusik, he founded Akoya Biosciences, which commercializes Nolan's co-Detection by indexing (CODEX) technology.[19][20]
Ufology and belief in extraterrestrial contact[edit]
In 2012, Nolan began analysis on the Atacama skeleton, a corpse from Chile that ufologists had speculated to be of alien origin, but which he later revealed to be a mummified human stillbirth with genetic bone defects and gene mutation causing deformity.[21][22][23][24][25]
According to Nolan, he was approached by "some people representing the government and an aerospace corporation to help them understand the medical harm that had come to some individuals, related to supposed interactions with an anomalous craft" because "they were interested in the kinds of blood analysis that my lab can do".[26]
Nolan is the lead author a study about materials associated with UFOs.[27][1][28] Since the formation of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force in 2020, multiple publications have reported on Nolan's involvement with The Pentagon and the CIA investigating samples of materials supposedly ejected at purported sites of UFO sightings.[28][1] In August 2022, Nolan appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight[29] show and discussed his claims of UAP-related research in an hour long interview. During a May 2023 SALT iConnections conference in Manhattan for an interview with Alex Klokus titled "The Pentagon, Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Crashed UFOs", Nolan claimed that some governments have retrieved artifacts from extraterrestrial craft, said that he gives the probability as "100 percent" that extraterrestrials have not only visited Earth but have been visiting earth for a long time, and speculated that what has visited earth are simply "emissaries" and possibly drones.[30][31]AsNew York Times columnist Ezra Klein interviewed journalist and UFO author Leslie Kean in June 2023, Kean told Klein that Nolan "knows David Grusch very well and vouches for him".[32]
