Anna Greka, MD, PHD

Professor

Harvard Medical School

Brigham and Women’s Hospital

CORE Institute Member

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

DIRECTOR

Kidney Disease Initiative

FOUNDER & CHAIR

Ladders to Cures Accelerator

 

Anna Greka is a physician-scientist, a Professor at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Brigham, and a Core Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she also serves as a member of the institute’s Executive Leadership Team.

In her laboratory, Anna spearheads research aimed at understanding the fundamental mechanisms of cellular dysfunction in genetic diseases with a focus on membrane proteins. Leading multidisciplinary teams of scientists, Anna and her team have uncovered opportunities to target convergent “nodal” biological pathways that cause diseases in unexpectedly diverse cell types and organs (i.e. the kidney, the eye and the brain). Many of these discoveries are making their way to clinical trials in patients, with promising results.

To fully harness the power of nodal biology in the age of Machine Learning/AI, Anna founded the Ladders to Cures (L2C) Accelerator, an ambitious new initiative whose goal is to catalyze progress across the research ecosystem and accelerate advances toward treatments and cures for patients with genetic diseases — building a future when cures for all diseases are available to everyone.

Her work has been widely recognized with many awards including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) and the Seldin-Smith Award for Pioneering Research from the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). Anna was selected as a U.S. National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leader Scholar and she was elected to serve as ASCI President. Internationally recognized as a thought leader in biomedicine, Anna was a featured speaker in the Dialogues Dispatch Podcast, the AI for Science Forum, and at TED2023.

Aiming to advance the translation of scientific discoveries into treatments for patients, Anna serves as founder, board member and scientific advisor to several biotechnology companies.

Anna holds an A.B. in Biology from Harvard University, an M.D. from the Harvard-MIT program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard Medical School.