Margaret Flanagan, MD

As Associate Professor and Endowed Baptist Health Foundation of San Antonio’s Distinguished Chair in Alzheimer and Neurodegenerative Diseases, my professional goal is to identify and delineate pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying dementia to enable future development of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. I have substantial experience in biospecimen banking and diagnostic neuropathology. I developed a brain autopsy protocol that significantly reduced costs and efforts while maintaining the diagnostic breadth of the original NIA-AA guidelines.

I have participated in an international, multidisciplinary working group that presented consensus-based guidelines for diagnosis using a condensed sampling and staining protocol for the staging of Limbic-predominant Age-relatedTDP43 Encephalopathy (LATE) neuropathological changes. I have established a laboratory that utilizes multidisciplinary approaches, including quantitative molecular platforms, biomarker development, biostatistics and epidemiologic assessments to identify and delineate the molecular mechanisms of dementia using rigorous and unbiased approaches and I am working towards subsequently developing feasible biomarkers for detecting preclinical neurodegeneration.

I serve as the Neuropathology Core Co-Leader for the South Texas ADRC and Co-Direct the Bigg’s Institute Brain Bank. I also serve as the Director of the iconic Nun Study on Aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Lastly, I am a founding member of the National Digital Pathology Working Group and lead our 24+ month digital pathology webinar series that was co-hosted by the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center.