Ann C. McKee, MD
William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor
Biography
Dr. McKee completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin and received her medical degree from the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. She completed residency training in neurology at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital and fellowship training in neuropathology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was Assistant Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard Medical School from 1991-94, when she became Associate Professor of Neurology and Pathology at Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. In 2011, she was promoted to Professor of Neurology and Pathology. Dr. McKee directs the Neuropathology Service for the New England Veterans Administration Medical Centers (VISN-1) and the Brain Banks for the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, Framingham Heart Study, and Centenarian Study, which are all based at the Bedford VAMC. Dr. McKee is also the Chief Neuropathologist for the National VA ALS Brain Bank.
Dr. McKee’s research interests center on the neuropathological alterations of neurodegenerative diseases, with a primary focus on the role of tau protein, axonal injury, trauma, vascular injury, and neurodegeneration. Much of her current work centers on mild traumatic brain injury from contact sports and military service and its long-term consequences. As a board-certified neurologist and neuropathologist, she is particularly interested in the clinical, behavioral and psychological manifestations of pathological disease and the neuroanatomical localization of clinical symptoms. She has written widely on many neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy Body disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Multiple System Atrophy, Frontotemporal Degeneration, Corticobasal Degeneration and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). She has been an invited participant in several NIH-sponsored workshops on Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Vascular Dementia and Traumatic Brain Injury. Dr. McKee’s work has been essential in establishing the clinical and pathological spectrum of trauma induced neurodegenerative disease, including CTE and Chronic Traumatic Encephalomyelopathy.
Recently, she has received widespread acclaim for her case series featured in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that found nearly every former National Football League (NFL) player who played at least one regular season game and whose brain then was donated for research was diagnosed post-mortem with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).
Other Positions
- Professor, Neurology, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
- Professor, Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
- Investigator, Framingham Heart Study
- Member, Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research, Boston University
- Graduate Faculty (Primary Mentor of Grad Students), Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Graduate Medical Sciences
- VA Boston Healthcare System
Education
- Case School of Medicine, MD
- University of Wisconsin-Madison, BS
Publications
- Published on 3/9/2023
Labadorf A, Agus F, Aytan N, Cherry J, Mez J, McKee A, Stein TD. Inflammation and neuronal gene expression changes differ in early versus late chronic traumatic encephalopathy brain. BMC Med Genomics. 2023 Mar 09; 16(1):49. PMID: 36895005.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/6/2023
Alosco ML, Ly M, Mosaheb S, Saltiel N, Uretsky M, Tripodis Y, Martin B, Palmisano J, Delano-Wood L, Bondi MW, Meng G, Xia W, Daley S, Goldstein LE, Katz DI, Dwyer B, Daneshvar DH, Nowinski C, Cantu RC, Kowall NW, Stern RA, Alvarez VE, Mez J, Huber BR, McKee AC, Stein TD. Decreased myelin proteins in brain donors exposed to football-related repetitive head impacts. Brain Commun. 2023; 5(2):fcad019. PMID: 36895961.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 2/10/2023
McKee AC, Stein TD, Huber BR, Crary JF, Bieniek K, Dickson D, Alvarez VE, Cherry JD, Farrell K, Butler M, Uretsky M, Abdolmohammadi B, Alosco ML, Tripodis Y, Mez J, Daneshvar DH. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE): criteria for neuropathological diagnosis and relationship to repetitive head impacts. Acta Neuropathol. 2023 Apr; 145(4):371-394. PMID: 36759368.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 1/21/2023
Nicks R, Clement NF, Alvarez VE, Tripodis Y, Baucom ZH, Huber BR, Mez J, Alosco ML, Aytan N, Cherry JD, Cormier KA, Kubilius C, Mathias R, Svirsky SE, Pothast MJ, Hildebrandt AM, Chung J, Han X, Crary JF, McKee AC, Frosch MP, Stein TD. Repetitive head impacts and chronic traumatic encephalopathy are associated with TDP-43 inclusions and hippocampal sclerosis. Acta Neuropathol. 2023 Apr; 145(4):395-408. PMID: 36681782.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 1/20/2023
Kirsch D, Shah A, Dixon E, Kelley H, Cherry JD, Xia W, Daley S, Aytan N, Cormier K, Kubilus C, Mathias R, Alvarez VE, Huber BR, McKee AC, Stein TD. Vascular injury is associated with repetitive head impacts and tau pathology in chronic traumatic encephalopathy. J Neuropathol Exp Neurol. 2023 Jan 20; 82(2):127-139. PMID: 36617181.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 11/23/2022
Yang J, Chang S, Chen IA, Kura S, Rosen GA, Saltiel NA, Huber BR, Varadarajan D, Balbastre Y, Magnain C, Chen SC, Fischl B, McKee AC, Boas DA, Wang H. Volumetric Characterization of Microvasculature in Ex Vivo Human Brain Samples By Serial Sectioning Optical Coherence Tomography. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2022 Dec; 69(12):3645-3656. PMID: 35560084.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 11/19/2022
Cherry JD, Baucom ZH, Eppich KG, Kirsch D, Dixon ER, Tripodis Y, Bieniek KF, Farrell K, Whitney K, Uretsky M, Crary JF, Dickson D, McKee AC. Neuroimmune proteins can differentiate between tauopathies. J Neuroinflammation. 2022 Nov 19; 19(1):278. PMID: 36403052.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 10/21/2022
Morrison MS, Aparicio HJ, Blennow K, Zetterberg H, Ashton NJ, Karikari TK, Tripodis Y, Martin B, Palmisano JN, Sugarman MA, Frank B, Steinberg EG, Turk KW, Budson AE, Au R, Goldstein LE, Jun GR, Kowall NW, Killiany R, Qiu WQ, Stern RA, Mez J, McKee AC, Stein TD, Alosco ML. Ante-mortem plasma phosphorylated tau (181) predicts Alzheimer's disease neuropathology and regional tau at autopsy. Brain. 2022 Oct 21; 145(10):3546-3557. PMID: 35554506.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 9/24/2022
Alosco ML, Su Y, Stein TD, Protas H, Cherry JD, Adler CH, Balcer LJ, Bernick C, Pulukuri SV, Abdolmohammadi B, Coleman MJ, Palmisano JN, Tripodis Y, Mez J, Rabinovici GD, Marek KL, Beach TG, Johnson KA, Huber BR, Koerte I, Lin AP, Bouix S, Cummings JL, Shenton ME, Reiman EM, McKee AC, Stern RA. Associations between near end-of-life flortaucipir PET and postmortem CTE-related tau neuropathology in six former American football players. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2023 01; 50(2):435-452. PMID: 36152064.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 9/21/2022
McKenzie AT, Marx GA, Koenigsberg D, Sawyer M, Iida MA, Walker JM, Richardson TE, Campanella G, Attems J, McKee AC, Stein TD, Fuchs TJ, White CL, Farrell K, Crary JF. Interpretable deep learning of myelin histopathology in age-related cognitive impairment. Acta Neuropathol Commun. 2022 Sep 21; 10(1):131. PMID: 36127723.
Read at: PubMed
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