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.
[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][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.
[5] To achieve this, she uses new viral vectors to enhance gene delivery and develops new therapeutic modalities.