The research in the Movement Disorders Division is led by Dr. Vikram (Vik) Khurana, the Chief of the Division. Dr. Khurana also leads the Precision Neurology Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which includes an American Parkinson Disease Center for Advanced Research (APDA CAR). Current research efforts have a unified goal: to develop treatments for patients with degenerative movement disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, atypical Parkinsonian syndromes such as Multiple System Atrophy and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, and Cerebellar Ataxias.
Benefitting from expertise in biological profiling, biospecimen banking and stem-cell biology, we seek to develop approaches to establish precise treatment options tailored to specific patients.
Laboratory research in the Division occurs in the setting of Laboratories and a number of Translational and Basic Science Initiatives that bring us together with multiple partnering laboratories at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and beyond:
We collaborate with academic laboratories within the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases focused on Parkinson’s disease and related disorders, and also with industry. These collaborations help move our vision forward toward executing clinical trials in stratified, well-defined patient population.
A centerpiece of our research efforts includes the Harvard Biomarker Study that is currently enrolling patients with neurodegenerative disorders and healthy controls.
Dr. Michael D. Fox in the Division leads the cross-department Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics that develops new treatments for patients with brain disease by directly targeting brain networks responsible for neurological and psychiatric symptoms.
| Initiatives | Lead Investigators | Co-Investigator |
|---|---|---|
| MyTrial Personalized Medicine for Degenerative Movement Disorders | Dr. Vikram Khurana | Dr. Barbara Changizi, Dr. Saranna Fanning |
| Barbara Bloom Ranson Program in MSA Research | Dr. Vikram Khurana | |
| Brigham Research Institute Transformative Grant | Dr. Vikram Khurana | |
| BWH Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson’s Disease | Dr. Jie Shen | |
| Functional Neurosurgery and Gene Therapy | Dr. Michael Hayes | Dr. Rees Cosgrove |
| Department of Defense: Gene-Environment Interactions in Parkinson’s Disease | Dr. Joanna Korecka, Dr. Richard Krolewski | Dr. Laurie Cox, Dr. Howard Weiner, Dr. Vikram Khurana |
| Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s Initiative (1) | Dr. Vikram Khurana | |
| Ken Griffin/ Michael J. Fox Foundation Alpha-Synuclein Imaging MGH/BWH Collaboration | Dr. Changning Wang | Dr. Stephen Gomperts, Dr. Vikram Khurana |
| Gene regulation and Parkinson’s disease – NIH R01 | Dr. Erinc Hallacli | Dr. Vikram Khurana |
| Alpha-synuclein aggregation biology (NIH R01s x 2) | Dr. Ulf Dettmer | Dr. Vikram Khurana |
| APDA Center for Advanced Research | Dr. Vikram Khurana | Dr. Daniel El-Kodsi |
| Palmitoylation and alpha-synuclein biology in Parkinson disease | Dr. Gary Ho | |
| Deciphering Neuronal Control of Behavioral Initiation and Suppression- NIH DP5 | Dr. Emily Ferenczi | |
| Toward personalized circuit therapy in OCD (Foundation Grant, R01) | Dr. Andreas Horn | Dr. Mike Fox, Dr. Darin Dougherty, Dr. Rees Cosgrove |
| Using causal sources of information to map an epilepsy circuit (R01) | Dr. Mike Fox | |
| Using brain connectivity to identify causal neuroanatomical substrate of depression symptoms (R01) | Dr. Mike Fox | |
| Testing utility of an ultra-high resolution connectome for deep brain stimulation mapping (UM1) | Dr. Anastasía Yendiki |
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