Andrew W. Grande MD, FAHA, FAANS

Andrew Grande, MD, is from the Twin Cities. He grew up in the Minneapolis lakes area and then later moved to St. Paul where he attended high school at St. Thomas Academy. He graduated from St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN) with a BA in chemistry and then attended the University of Minnesota Medical School. During college and medical school, Dr. Grande was active in research, working in the laboratories of Drs Esam El Fakahany, Virginia Seybold, and Walter Low. These experiences later culminated in a burning curiosity and passion for using stem cells to treat stroke.

Dr. Grande completed his neurosurgical training at the Mayfield Clinic and the University of Cincinnati. During his training, he worked very closely with Dr. John Tew, learning the nuances of trigeminal neuralgia treatment, including both microvascular decompression and radiofrequency ablation. He then went on to complete a fellowship with Mario Zuccarello, Andrew Ringer, and Todd Abruzzo at the University of Cincinnati in both endovascular and cerebrovascular neurosurgery. During this time, Dr. Grande was exposed to intracranial bypass surgery for treating moyamoya disease and to cutting-edge endovascular treatments such as the use of Onyx glue for treating cerebral aneurysms.

During his residency and then continuing into his fellowship, Dr. Grande was involved in stem cell research with Dr. Masato Nakafuku at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Professor Nakafuku was one of the world's first to demonstrate neurogenesis in the hippocampus following stroke and he remains internationally recognized for his work with adult neurogenesis. In Nakafuku’s laboratory, Grande’s research focused primarily on reprogramming cells within the cerebral cortex to form neurons following stroke.

In 2010, Grande was the recipient of the William P. Van Wagenen Fellowship from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. As a Van Wagenen Fellow, he traveled to Munich, Germany, where he completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Magdalena Gotz at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat. There he focused his research on identifying afferent connections to new neurons generated in the rodent cortex following a cortical layer-specific injury.