Philip De Jager

Dr. Philip De Jager is an Associate Professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the program in Translational NeuroPsychiatric Genomics within the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry. He is the first incumbent of the Steven R. and Kathleen P. Haley Distinguished Chair for Neurosciences at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

After completing Yale University with a degree in molecular biophysics & biochemistry as well as French literature, Dr. De Jager received a Ph.D. in neurogenetics from Rockefeller University and an M.D. from Cornell University Medical College before completing his M.M.Sc. in clinical investigation at Harvard Medical School and the MIT. He has previously served as a Clinical Fellow in neurology at BWH and MGH, and is currently a practicing neurologist at the Multiple Sclerosis Center at BWH.

The goal of Dr. De Jager’s work as a clinician-scientist is to apply modern methods of neuroimmunology, statistical genetics and systems biology to the understanding of common neurodegenerative diseases. He has applied his discoveries from basic research to develop novel tools to enhance clinical decision-making, identify new therapeutic targets and test lead compounds to perturb the sequence of events leading from health to neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. De Jager studies primarily multiple sclerosis (MS) and age-related cognitive decline. In both of these neurodegenerataive diseases, he is identifying molecular networks that contribute to pathophysiology and, thanks to support from a $7.9 million grant from the NIH’s Accelerating Medicines Partnership, he has built an analytic and experimental pipeline to validate target genes and discover new lead compounds in human neurons, astrocytes, macrophage and microglial cells.