We are pleased to announce that Karra Jones, MD, PhD, was appointed as Section Head of Muscle and Nerve Pathology on May 16, 2022, shortly after joining the faculty in April. In this role, she will direct and design all of the neuromuscular diagnostic services provided in-house and to regional providers in the consultative Muscle and Nerve Pathology Service. Jones plans expansion of the service to a larger outreach capacity with enhanced modalities to assist with genetic neuromuscular diagnosis.
Jones received her MD and PhD from the University of Kansas School of Medicine, where she examined peripheral nerve innervation of muscle spindles in the setting of diabetic neuropathy in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology.
She completed her combined Anatomic and Neuropathology residency and fellowship at the University of California, San Diego, and became board certified in AP and NP. She then practiced diagnostic neuropathology, led the neuromuscular pathology service, and assisted in biorepository and biomarker laboratory efforts at UCSD.
Before her appointment at Duke, Jones was a Clinical Associate Professor of Pathology at the University of Iowa where she expanded her neuromuscular expertise and continued to practice neurosurgical, and autopsy neuropathology.
Jones loves teaching trainees of all levels and has received multiple teaching awards. Her research interests include inherited muscular dystrophies and myopathies, and she is a consultant for muscular dystrophy and myopathy gene therapy clinical trials.
She is very active in the American Association of Neuropathologists and is a member of the College of American Pathologists Neuropathology Committee.
Please join us in congratulating her on this important achievement. We would like to thank Anne Buckley, MD, PhD, who has served as Section Head since 2009, when she took over from Edward Bossen, MD, who founded Duke’s Muscle Pathology Service in 1971. Among other initiatives, Buckley introduced immunostaining diagnostics, shifted the emphasis to providing for newly emerging molecular analyses, and enlarged the service to form the Muscle and Nerve Pathology Service. Dr. Buckley will continue in her other departmental roles.