Dr. Francesca Gori received her PhD in Biology from the University of Florence, Italy. Upon receiving her degree, Dr. Gori joined the group of Larry Riggs at the Mayo Clinic as a postdoctoral fellow. During that time, she investigated the effects of signaling molecules and hormones on the lineage commitment and differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cell lines and the possible implications of this for our understanding of bone remodeling. In 2000, she became an instructor in medicine and in 2005 was promoted to assistant professor in medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Here she identified a novel gene, Wdr5, which is a critical component of a complex required for chromatin modifications associated with activation of gene expression and has a crucial role in chondrocyte and osteoblast differentiation. In 2011, Dr. Gori joined the Department of Oral Medicine, Infection, and Immunity at HSDM.

Dr. Gori has authored numerous publications and received awards such as the Harold Frost Young Investigator Award of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) in 2005 and the John Haddad Young Investigator Award of the Advances in Mineral Metabolism (AIMM) in 2007). She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research Plus.

Dr. Gori is also involved in formal teaching activities contributing to the education of DMD students and residents enrolled at HSDM. She serves as the Director of pre-doctoral research at HSDM. She is the director of the Scholar in Oral Health course and the discipline director for the Craniofacial and Developmental Genetics course for the 2nd year DMD students. Dr. Gori is the Program Director of the DMSc Program in Oral Biology, which offers a three-year structured DMSc Research-Only degree in oral biology and the director of the course included in the Advanced Graduate Education (AGE) curriculum and entitled “Mineralized Tissue Biology and diseases”. She. Dr. Gori also serves on many HSDM education committees.

Field of Interest

Dr. Gori’s work focuses on investigating the molecular, cellular and genetic basis of skeletal homeostasis and its regulation in health and disease. Her major focus is exploring the mechanisms by which Wnt signaling regulates skeletal stem cells and bone homeostasis. Recent work from our lab, including the work on the role of Wnt16, and Sfrp4 is of great interest, in that it established that trabecular and cortical bone are differentially regulated by Wnt signaling. Other projects in the lab are focused on the role of osteocytes in the regulation of bone remodeling and mineral metabolism and on the Mechanisms by which PTH/PTHrP signaling regulates skeletal homeostasis.