Anne Cross

Anne Cross, M.D., earned her medical degree from the University of Alabama, completed neurology residency at George Washington University and then spent six years of fellowship training in neuroimmunology at the National Institutes of Health, molecular biology at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and neuropathology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. While at Einstein, she was awarded the Harry Weaver Neuroscience Scholar Award of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Dr. Cross joined the faculty at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in 1991, where she now holds the Manny and Rosalyn Rosenthal–Dr. John L. Trotter endowed chair in neuroimmunology and is co-director of the John L. Trotter Multiple Sclerosis Clinic at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Dr. Cross has devoted her career of over 30 years to the study of MS. Her work has focused on understanding the mechanisms involved in pathogenesis of inflammation and demyelination in the central nervous system, and more recently, in using new methods to image the CNS of MS patients. Dr. Cross demonstrated that B cells in the immune system play an important role in an animal model of MS, which supported eventual clinical trials by her group and several others showing that B cell depletion was beneficial in relapsing MS patients. Dr. Cross’ current work includes the development of novel imaging techniques to non-invasively identify demyelination versus axonal loss versus inflammation in the CNS of living animals and patients.