Craig G. van Horne, MD, PhD

Dr. Craig van Horne is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in neurosurgery who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of movement disorders. His research focuses on innovative surgical treatment strategies for Parkinson’s disease.

Since his days as an undergraduate, van Horne has been interested in neuro-regeneration and the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. While working on his bachelor’s degree in biology at Williams College in Massachusetts, he completed an honors thesis in neurobiology, transplanting peripheral nerve tissue to the central nervous system in goldfish. During his MD-PhD studies at the University of Colorado, van Horne expanded his work on neuro-transplantation for his doctoral thesis, focusing on an animal model of Parkinson’s disease.

Van Horne completed his residency in neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he later served on the neurosurgery faculty. After 20 years in Boston, he moved to Kentucky to join UK HealthCare, where he practices as a neurosurgeon and serves as co-director of the Brain Restoration Center (BRC), part of the Kentucky Neuroscience Institute. As a leader of the BRC, van Horne collaborates with a multidisciplinary team that is helping patients find relief from movement disorder symptoms while also pursuing innovative treatments in the fight against Parkinson’s.

Van Horne is the Virginia T. Barrow Endowed Chair at UK and a professor of neurosurgery in the UK College of Medicine. He is currently leading a first-of-its-kind clinical study on “DBS+,” a novel approach to Parkinson’s treatment that involves transplanting peripheral nerve tissue into the brain during deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery.

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