Mario Estable is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biology and a researcher in the Molecular Retrovirology Lab at Ryerson University. Estable received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Ottawa, his Master of Science from Laval University, and his PhD from the University of British Columbia. Estable completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at The Rockefeller University in New York City. In addition to his research on vaccines for illnesses such as SARS, Estable gained notoriety in 2006 for discovering, cloning, and naming a protein--Major CDK9 Elongation Factor (MCEF)--that can repress the viral replication necessary for HIV to progress to AIDS.
Estable comes from a lineage of scientific researchers. His grandfather, Clemente Estable (1894-1976) studied in Madrid with Nobel Laureate Don Santiago Ramón y Cajal, then later established the Biological Research Institute in Uruguay. Meanwhile, Estable's parents, Juan and Rosita Estable, worked at the National Institutes of Health, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Stanford University, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Ames Research Centre.