Ana Griciuc, PhD

Ana Griciuc is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Griciuc received her M.Eng. in biotechnology from INSA-Lyon and M.Sc. in biochemistry from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology (Munich) in 2006. She then became a fellow of the European Union Research Training Network “Marie Curie-Neurotrain” and received her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Helmholtz Research Center Munich in 2010. Dr. Griciuc performed her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi at MGH and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Griciuc showed that CD33, an innate immunity-related Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) risk gene, strongly impaired the ability of microglia to uptake and clear brain amyloid-beta (Aß), and demonstrated that TREM2 acts downstream of CD33 in modulating microglial pathology in mouse models of AD. Her research suggests that inhibiting CD33 and/or increasing TREM2 activity represents potential therapies for AD. Her current research projects focus on investigating the functions of CD33 and TREM2 and how mutations in these genes result in susceptibility to late-onset AD. Dr. Griciuc received several prestigious awards, including the 2011 Graduate Student Award in Environmental Health Research, a postdoctoral fellowship (German Research Foundation), Fund for Medical Discovery Fellowship (MGH/ECOR), and the NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00).