Xandra Owens Breakefield | |
---|---|
Alma mater |
Georgetown University Wilson College |
Scientific career | |
Institutions |
Harvard Medical School Massachusetts General Hospital |
Thesis | Bacterial division : studies using a temperature-sensitive septationless mutant of Bacillus subtilis (1972) |
Xandra Owens Breakefield is an American neurologist who is a professor of neurology at the Harvard Medical School. Her research makes use of molecular genetics to understand the origins of inherited neurological diseases.
As a child, Breakfield was undecided about what she would do when she grew up. Her mother told her she had to attend college or work in a dime store, so Breakefield decided to attend college. [1] Breakefield enrolled as an undergraduate at Wilson College, where she discovered the joy of learning. [2] [1] She was an undergraduate at the time that DNA had first been described, which inspired her to pursue something scientific. [1] She earned her doctorate at Georgetown University,[ citation needed] then was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institutes of Health, where she worked alongside Marshall Warren Nirenberg. [1] She then moved to the United States' first human genetics laboratory. [1] She was inspired by human genetics, and eventually led the team that discovered the genetic markers for the dystonia gene. [1] [3]
Breakefield's early work considered the nerve growth factor, a protein involved in the development of sensory neurons, catechol-O-methyltransferase and monoamine oxidase. [4]
Breakefield uses molecular genetics to understand inherited variations in neurological disease. [5] To achieve this, she uses new viral vectors to enhance gene delivery and develops new therapeutic modalities. [6] In particular, she has developed strategies to identify the genes that cause movement disorders (e.g. early-onset torsion dystonia and X-linked dystonia parkinsonism). In addition, she has studied the extracellular vesicles that are released by cells of brain tumor, looking at how they modify their microenvironment to promote tumor growth. [7]