Maureen Hanson

Maureen R. Hanson, PhD., is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, US, and Director of the Cornell Center for Enervating NeuroImmune Disease. In April 2021, Hanson was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

In addition to her research on genome-containing organelles of plants, chloroplasts and mitochondria, she is exploring the pathophysiology of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Research goals include examining the gut and blood microbiome in healthy vs. ill subjects and identifying differences in gene expression before and after exercise in subjects diagnosed with CFS/ME compared to healthy subjects.

Dr. Hanson, together with a team of researchers and clinicians at Ithaca College collaborated to create a new ME/CFS research center called the Center for Enervating NeuroImmune Disease (CENID) of which she is the director. She, also, is a member of the Working Group which offers their expertise and resources to the ME/CFS Collaborative Research Center at Stanford University.

Dr. Hanson's strong desire to research and advocate for ME/CFS is motivated by her having a family member with chronic fatigue syndrome.

Education

 * B.S. degree at Duke University
 * Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology from Harvard University
 * NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard

Cornell ME/CFS Collaborative Research Center
In 2017, Maureen Hanson, Ph.D. was named the Principal Investigator of the Cornell ME/CFS Collaborative Research Center, a collaborative research center partly funded by an NIH grant.

IOM Committee on Diagnostic Criteria for ME/CFS
Dr Hanson was a reviewer for the 2015 report produced by the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Diagnostic Criteria for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

ME/CFS Common Data Element (CDE) Project
Member of the Biomarkers Working Group of the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Common Data Element (CDE) Project sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Notable studies

 * 2012, A Multicenter Blinded Analysis Indicates No Association between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and either Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-Related Virus or Polytropic Murine Leukemia Virus - (Full Text)
 * 2016, A Pair of Identical Twins Discordant for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Differ in Physiological Parameters and Gut Microbiome Composition
 * 2016, Reduced diversity and altered composition of the gut microbiome in individuals with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome - (Full Text)
 * 2016, Mitochondrial DNA variants correlate with symptoms in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome - (Full Text)
 * 2016, Association of mitochondrial DNA variants with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) symptoms - (Full Text)
 * 2017, Metabolic profiling of a myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome discovery cohort reveals disturbances in fatty acid and lipid metabolism - (Abstract)
 * 2018, Eukaryotes in the gut microbiota in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome - (Abstract)
 * 2018, Prospective Biomarkers from Plasma Metabolomics of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Implicate Redox Imbalance in Disease Symptomatology - (Full Text)
 * 2020, Comprehensive Circulatory Metabolomics in ME/CFS Reveals Disrupted Metabolism of Acyl Lipids and Steroids - (Full text)
 * 2020, Letter to the Editor of Metabolites - (Full letter)


 * 2020, Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome patients exhibit altered T cell metabolism and cytokine associations - (Full text)
 * 2020, Cytokine profiling of extracellular vesicles isolated from plasma in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: A pilot study - (Full text)

Talks and interviews

 * 2014, Speaker at the 9th Invest in ME International ME Conference DVD available(no speech title given)
 * Jun 3, 2016, Speaker at the 11th Invest in ME International ME Conference on "The Search for Biomarkers for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis" DVD available
 * Sep 1, 2016, Solve ME/CFS Initiative Webinar with Maureen Hanson, Ph.D., "Current and Previous Research on ME/CFS at Cornell University"
 * Aug 12, 2017, Community Symposium on the Molecular Basis of ME/CFS - 2017 "Probing metabolism in ME/CFS"
 * Oct 14, 2017 - Solve ME/CFS Initiative Discovery Forum 2017: An Interview with Dr. Maureen Hanson by Dr. Zaher Nahle
 * 3-5 May 2018, ME/CFS Canadian Collaborative Team Conference - Speech title: Metabolism in ME/CFS
 * 31 May 2019, Speaker at the14th Invest in ME Conference 2019; Speech title: Immune Dysregulation in ME/CFS - (Video)
 * 8 June 2019, Immune System Function of ME/CFS, given at the Inaugural Harvard ME/CFS Collaboration Symposium sponsored by Open Medicine Foundation

Articles

 * May 10, 2016, When the Hoofbeats are Zebras by Maureen Hanson
 * May 20, 2016, Be Aware and Beware: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Is an Equal Opportunity Disease by Maureen Hanson
 * Sep 30, 2016, Millions Are Missing: Will The World Finally Notice?
 * Oct 10, 2016, The Real Story About Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Online presence

 * PubMed
 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * Cornell University - Professor Maureen Hanson Website
 * Cornell University - Faculty page, Maureen Hanson
 * Scholar Google