Florian Eichler, MD

Dr. Florian Eichler is the director of the leukodystrophy service and the Center for Rare Neurological Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), as well as an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. His laboratory explores the relationship of mutant genes to specific biochemical defects and their contribution to neurodegeneration.

Dr. Eichler obtained his medical degree from the University of Vienna Medical School. After graduating from medical school in 1997, he entered residency in pediatrics and pursued studies on cerebral blood flow and metabolism at the University of Vienna. In 1999 he won a scholarship to study in vivo MR spectroscopy in pediatric patients with metabolic and neurometabolic conditions at Johns Hopkins (Stipendium Metabolicum 1999) and joined the laboratory of Dr. Hugo Moser dedicated to peroxisomal disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. Following his research fellowship at Johns Hopkins he underwent residency training in child neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). After completing residency in 2005, he joined the staff at MGH.

Dr. Eichler is the principal investigator of several NIH- funded studies on neurogenetic disorders, including a natural history study of Canavan Disease (NCT02851563), ALD (NCT03278899) as well as a gene therapy trial of adrenoleukodystrophy. He also serves as chair of the Rare Disease Think Tank at MGH and is founder of the international consortium ALD Connect, a patient powered research network. In addition to providing scientific and administrative direction to the Global Leukodystrophy Initiative Clinical Trials Network, he will co-direct Project 1 and Project 2.