Howard L. Weiner

Howard L. Weiner is the Robert L. Kroc Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School, Director and Founder of the Brigham MS Center and Co-Director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston which has over 250 scientists and investigates five major brain diseases: Multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, Parkinson’s disease and brain tumors. He has pioneered immunotherapy in MS and has investigated immune mechanisms in nervous system diseases including MS, Alzheimer’s Disease, ALS, stroke and brain tumors. He has also pioneered the investigation of the mucosal immune system for the treatment of autoimmune and other diseases and the use of anti-CD3 to induce regulatory T cells for the treatment of these diseases. He discovered Th3 regulatory T cells which act via TGF-β, now recognized as a central cytokine in immune system differentiation and he is currently at the forefront of investigating the microbiome in MS and modulating the microbiome by oral administration of microRNAs. Many of his discoveries in basic neuroimmunology are being translated to human disease including MS, ALS, and AD. He established the Comprehensive Longitudinal Investigation of Multiple Sclerosis (CLIMB) observational cohort of 2300 MS patients at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital now in its 20th year to deeply phenotype MS patients and the development of precision medicine for MS. In 2004, Harvard Medical School honored him with the establishment of the Howard L. Weiner Professorship of Neurologic Diseases. Howard is the 2007 recipient of the John Dystel Prize for MS Research and in 2012 he received the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award for investigating the innate immune system in Alzheimer’s disease. Howard holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.D. from the University of Colorado School of Medicine.