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 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]
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