Brian Wainger, M.D., Ph.D.


Clinicn Investigator, Assc Prf
Neurology, Mass General Research Institute
Associate Professor of Anaesthesia
Harvard Medical School
Associate Professor of Neurology
Harvard Medical School
Assistant Anesthetist/Pain Medicine
Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
Principal Faculty
Harvard Stem Cell Institute
MD Columbia University in the City of New York 2004
als; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; autonomic nervous system; cervical vertebrae; chronic pain; cyclic amp; injections intra-articular; ion channels; methylprednisolone; motor neurons; muscle proteins; post-traumatic headache; rna transfer; spinal nerves; trigeminal nerve; tyr Brian Wainger's lab fuses electrophysiology and stem cell biology to explore how abnormal neuronal physiology contributes to diseases of the motor and sensory nervous systems. Working with motor neurons derived from ALS patients and healthy controls, Dr. Wainger performed fundamental electrophysiological characterization and identified motor neuron hyperexcitability in ALS patient-derived motor neurons (Wainger et al., 2014). Mechanistic analysis of the motor neurons led to the identification of a novel therapeutic candidate, which will be investigated in a clinical trial.

On the sensory neuron front, Dr. Wainger developed a lineage reprogramming technique for derivation of pain sensing (nociceptor) neurons from human fibroblasts (Wainger et al., 2014). This technology has already revealed novel insights through disease modeling of familial painful neuropathy and promises to be valuable in the development of drug screens using human neurons.
Research lab website Publications Clinical Profile
brian.wainger@mgh.harvard.edu

Wang Ambulatory Care Cntr
15 Parkman Street
Boston, MA 02114