Professor of Pathology
Harvard University
Maria Lehtinen is Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and the Hannah C. Kinney, MD, Chair, in Pediatric Pathology Research Boston Children’s Hospital. Her research focuses on the mechanisms by which the choroid plexus, an important brain barrier and producer of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), contributes to brain development and lifelong brain health.
Dr. Lehtinen received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard University where she trained with Dr. Azad Bonni on molecular mechanisms regulating neuronal survival and death. She joined Anna-Elina Lehesjoki’s lab for her early postdoctoral work at the University of Helsinki, where she investigated inherited neurologic disorders enriched in the Finnish population including progressive myoclonus epilepsy. Lehtinen carried out further postdoctoral training with Dr. Christopher A. Walsh at Harvard, where they found that secreted factors in the CSF play active roles in instructing the development and health of the mammalian brain. Dr. Lehtinen established her own laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2012, where she has taken an interdisciplinary and translational approach to study the choroid plexus-CSF-system in the brain. Lab members have a broad range of interests, ranging from neurodevelopmental disorders and mental health conditions to age-associated neurologic diseases.
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Neuroimmune Signaling at the Choroid Plexus and in CSF
Friday, June 27, 2025
2:00pm - 2:25pm East Coast USA Time
