Clinician Investigator, Other MGBfC Critical Care Research Faculty, Mass General Research Institute

Pediatrician Pediatric-Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Harvard Medical School

MD Albert Einstein College of Medicine 1988

blood-brain barrier; brain injuries; brain microvascular cells; brain trauma; cytokines; endonucleases; endothelial cells; interleukin-1beta; neuregulin-1; neuroprotective agents; neurovascular response; nrg1; recovery of function; tbi; traumatic brain injury My research focuses on the neurovascular responses, in particular as it relates to the pathological processes after brain trauma. I am also interested in the actions of neuregulin-1, an endogenous growth factor, within the neurovascular unit.  NRG1 is known to be important in the function of neurons and glia, but its activity in endothelial cells is not as well defined. 

My goals were to 1) determine whether NRG1 plays significant roles in the biology of brain microvascular endothelial cells; and 2) to investigate the neuroprotective potential of NRG1 in brain trauma.

Data from my experiments demonstrated that NRG1 has key functions in brain microvascular cells; in particular, NRG1 prevents endothelial hyper-permeability due to cytokine injury, a significant finding given the many pathological processes that stem from microvascular hyper-permeability during CNS and systemic illness.