pedro-gonzalez-alegre

Dr. Gonzalez-Alegre is a physician-scientist with subspecialty training on movement disorders and clinical neurogenetics. He received his MD and PhD degrees in Neuroscience from the University of Malaga in Spain. After completing a neurology residency and fellowship on Movement disorders/Neurogenetics at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UI), he joined the faculty at that institution where he remained for over a decade. Dr. Gonzalez-Alegre joined the Department of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014, where he was the founding Director of the of the Huntington’s Disease (HD) Center of Excellence, the Clinical Neurogenetics Program and the Translational Center of Excellence on Gene Therapy at the Department of Neurology, and Director of Clinical Programs at the Raymond G. Perelman Center for Cellular & Molecular Therapeutics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

During his academic career, Dr. Gonzalez-Alegre provided clinical care to patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease, HD, ataxia and other neurogenetic disorders while being an active researcher and educator. His research efforts were geared towards the development of novel nucleic acid-based therapeutic strategies for neurological diseases, including development of innovative technologies to improve delivery of therapeutic agents to the human brain. 

These efforts were recognized with the 2003 S. Weir Mitchell Award from the American Academy of Neurology, the 2004 Junior Award for Excellence in Basic Research from the Movement Disorders Society, the 2012 Jon Stolk Award in Movement Disorders from the American Academy of Neurology, and the 2012 Stanley Fahn Award from the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation. In 2021, he joined Spark Therapeutics as the Head of Gene Therapy Research, where he manages all therapeutic areas and immunology within the research organization.