Natasha Jane Caplen is a British-American geneticist who discovered RNA interference (RNAi) in mammalian cells.

Caplen completed a Ph.D. from the King's College Hospital Medical School where she studied the genetics of type I diabetes and its complications.

[1] Her dissertation in 1991 was titled, A Study of the Genetics of Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus and its Microvascular Complications.

[2] Caplen's postdoctoral training began at St Mary's Hospital Medical School where she focused on the development of gene therapy approaches for cystic fibrosis (CF) during which she was involved in some of the first pre-clinical and clinical studies of cationic lipid mediated gene therapy for CF.

[1][3] In 1996, Caplen came to the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at NIH as a visiting fellow, where she initially conducted studies investigating hybrid viral vector systems.