Dr. Steven Gray earned his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Vanderbilt University in 2006, after receiving a B.S. degree with honors from Auburn University.  He performed a postdoctoral fellowship focusing on gene therapy in the laboratory of Jude Samulski at UNC Chapel Hill.  He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.  Dr. Gray is the director of the UTSW Viral Vector Facility and maintains affiliations with the Department of Molecular Biology, the Department of Neurology and Neurotherapeutics, the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development, and the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine at UT Southwestern.  He also maintains an adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of Pediatrics and the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Dr. Gray’s core expertise is in AAV gene therapy vector engineering, followed by optimizing approaches to deliver a gene to the nervous system.  His major focus is in AAV vector development to develop vectors tailored to serve specific clinical and research applications involving the nervous system.  These include the development of novel AAV capsids amenable to widespread CNS gene transfer.  As AAV-based platform gene transfer technologies have been developed to achieve global, efficient, and in some cases cell-type specific CNS gene delivery, his research focus has also included preclinical studies to apply these reagents toward the development of treatments for neurological diseases.  Currently these include preclinical studies for Rett Syndrome, Giant Axonal Neuropathy (GAN), Tay-Sachs, Sandhoff, Krabbe, AGU, Charcot-Marie Tooth, and Batten Diseases, and have expanded into human clinical studies to test a gene therapy approach for GAN.   

Dr. Gray has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers in journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, Molecular Therapy, Nature Biotechnology, Gene Therapy, and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  He also has 3 pending patents. His research is funded by the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, as well as numerous large and small research foundations.  Dr. Gray was recently recognized with the 2016 Healthcare Hero award by the Triangle Business Journal, and his work on GAN was featured in a story by the CBS National Evening News in 2015.