Diego Iacono

Dr. Diego Iacono is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurology, Pathology (Neuropathology), and Neuroscience at the Uniformed Services University (USU) in Bethesda, MD. He serves as Deputy Director of the DoD/USU Brain Tissue Repository (BTR) and Neuropathology Core at the Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine (CNRM). His research focuses on traumatic brain injury (TBI), TBI-related neuropsychiatric disorders, dementias, and movement disorders, with emphasis on molecular mechanisms, drug discovery, and neuropathological correlations. He leads the world's first brain bank dedicated to military TBI studies and collaborates with NIH, Harvard, UCSF, and Duke University on projects like MRI-neuropathology correlations and Guam disease investigations.

• Education:
• M.D. and Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, Italy
• Neurology residency in Italy with training at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (Paris) and National Hospital for Neurology (London)
• Post-residency neuropathology training at Johns Hopkins University

Research Interests: Dr. Iacono's work spans clinical and experimental neuropathology, including TBI's long-term effects, neurodegenerative disease mechanisms, and translational studies using human and animal models. He pioneered studies on twin brains (Karolinska Institutet) and established a neuropathology lab to investigate pathophysiological timing of TBI. Key areas include CTE, PTSD-neuropathology links, and tau pathology therapies.

Collaborations & Projects:

• Lead CNRM's Brain Collection for Repetitive TBI, Blast TBI, and PTSD
• NIH-NINDS collaborations on FTD, ALS-FTD, PD, and DLB with TBI history
• Guam Disease 3-disease project linking ALS, Parkinsonism, and Alzheimer's

Labs & Teams: Director of USU's Translational Neuropathology Lab and BTR, coordinating multi-institutional research networks.