Xandra Breakefield

About

The Breakefield laboratory uses molecular genetic techniques to understand the cause of inherited neurological diseases and to develop vectors which can deliver genes to the nervous system for therapeutic purposes.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Oncology
• Internal medicine
• Biology
• Genetics
• Cancer research
• Bioinformatics
• Cell biology
• Biochemistry
• Computational biology

Selected publications

• RNA delivery by extracellular vesicles in mammalian cells and its applications

  Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology · 2020 · 1778 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Exosome-based liquid biopsies in cancer: opportunities and challenges

  Annals of Oncology · 2021 · 843 citations

  DOI

• Discovery and Verification of Extracellular miRNA Biomarkers for Non-invasive Prediction of Pre-eclampsia in Asymptomatic Women

  Cell Reports Medicine · 2020 · 57 citations

  Development of effective prevention and treatment strategies for pre-eclampsia is limited by the lack of accurate methods for identification of at-risk pregnancies. We performed small RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of maternal serum extracellular RNAs (exRNAs) to discover and verify microRNAs (miRNAs) differentially expressed in patients who later developed pre-eclampsia. Sera collected from 73 pre-eclampsia cases and 139 controls between 17 and 28 weeks gestational age (GA), divided into separate dis…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Glioblastoma Cortical Organoids Recapitulate Cell-State Heterogeneity and Intercellular Transfer

  Cancer Discovery · 2024-10-07 · 39 citations

  articleOpen access

  Glioblastoma (GBM) is characterized by heterogeneous malignant cells that are functionally integrated within the neuroglial microenvironment. In this study, we model this ecosystem by growing GBM into long-term cultured human cortical organoids that contain the major neuroglial cell types found in the cerebral cortex. Single-cell RNA sequencing analysis suggests that, compared with matched gliomasphere models, GBM cortical organoids more faithfully recapitulate the diversity and expression progr…

  PublisherDOI

• Extracellular vesicles for the delivery of gene therapy

  Nature Reviews Bioengineering · 2025-03-04 · 38 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant P01NS087997

  NIH · $12.8M · 2021

• NIH Grant P30NS045776

  NIH · $21.9M · 2019

• NIH Grant R01NS021921

  NIH · $1.6M · 1996

Frequent coauthors

• Laurie J. Ozelius

  Harvard University

  185 shared

• Jeffrey Hewett

  118 shared

• James F. Gusella

  105 shared

• Ralph Weissleder

  Center for Systems Biology

  104 shared

• Miguel Sena‐Esteves

  University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School

  96 shared

• Susan Bressman

  Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

  95 shared

• Mitchell F. Brin

  University of California, Irvine

  92 shared

• Stanley Fahn

  Columbia University Irving Medical Center

  89 shared

Labs

• Breakefield LaboratoryPI

Education

• Ph.D., Microbial Genetics

  Georgetown University

  1971

• A.B., Biology

  Wilson College

  1965

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Charles Czeislerh-187
• Constance L. Cepkoh-149
• Junying Yuanh-133