Claudia F. Lucchinetti, M.D.
Professor of Neurology

Claudia F. Lucchinetti, M.D., is a consultant in the Department of Neurology at Mayo Clinic. She joined the Mayo Clinic faculty in 1996 and holds the academic rank of professor of neurology. She is also chair of the Division of Multiple Sclerosis and Autoimmune Neurology. She is a member of the Mayo Clinic Personnel Committee, Associate Dean of Research, and Chair of the Research Personnel Subcommittee. She is Associate Director of the Mayo Clinic Center of Multiple Sclerosis and Demyelinating Disease Research, and a member of the Mayo Clinic Neuromyelitis Optica Consortium. 

Dr. Lucchinetti was born in Chicago and received the B.S. degree in biology from Northwestern University. She attended Rush Medical College in Chicago, Ill., where she received the MD degree in 1990. After an internship at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, she was a neurology resident at Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. She completed a fellowship in neuroimmunology at Mayo Clinic under the direction of Moses Rodriguez, M.D., with additional subspecialty training as a Mayo Foundation Scholar in experimental neuropathology at the Brain Research Institute in Vienna, Austria. 

Dr. Lucchinetti’s area of research interest is on the immunopathology and pathogenesis of central nervous system inflammatory disorders including Multiple Sclerosis, Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO), and Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM). Dr. Lucchinetti has been active in both clinical and basic science research activities and is principal investigator of the MS Lesion Project, an international collaborative study funded by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society since 2000 to investigate the clinical and radiological correlates of the MS lesion. Her research is also funded by several organizations including the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation on NMO research. Her findings have been published in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U S A, Lancet, Brain, Annals of Neurology, Lancet Neurology, Neurology, and Archives of Neurology.

Dr. Lucchinetti’s research has contributed novel insights underlying the mechanisms of tissue injury in patients with early stages of MS and other CNS inflammatory demyelinating disorders. She first-authored an important highly cited peer-reviewed study in 2000 describing four different patterns of tissue damage in early MS, and she suggested that MS lesions may form differently between different MS patient subgroups. This work has potential major treatment implications. In her 2002 publication on NMO, she proposed that NMO was an antibody mediated disease targeting the perivascular space. This ultimately was confirmed in subsequent Mayo clinic studies she did in collaboration with Dr. Vanda Lennon and the Mayo Clinic NMO Consortium, wherein both the biomarker and target antigen in this disease were identified. Her laboratory is now focused on better understanding the immunological consequences of this antibody on astrocyte function in NMO. Most recently, Dr. Lucchinetti’s research described evidence for early inflammatory cortical damage in MS, and her work suggests that the disease may progress from the outermost layers of the brain into the deeper brain regions. Her work sheds more light on the underlying disease activity that may occur in people in the earliest stages of MS. Understanding the sequence and timing of nervous system-damaging events in MS may lead to identification of novel treatment strategies aimed at limiting this tissue damage, and stopping MS disease progression. This work was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Lucchinetti has lectured extensively both nationally and internationally. She is recognized as an international expert and referral source for seeing patients with MS, NMO, ADEM and other acute white matter inflammatory disorders. She has mentored numerous trainees at all levels of their academic training. She has been the director of numerous CME and Academy of Neurology courses. She manages an active clinical translational research laboratory, as well as holds several leadership administrative roles both internally and outside of Mayo. 

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