Shi Laboratory

Fu-Dong Shi, MD, PhD

Laboratory Focus

The Barrow Neuroimmunology Laboratory is a collaborative effort that encompasses the Neuroimmunology Regular Clinical Service Team, the Clinical Research Team, and the North American Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis (NARCOMS) Project.

The overall goals of the laboratory program are to improve understanding of innate immunity, inflammatory neurological disease and to develop treatment strategies. Our specific areas of focus are as follows:

• Enhancing the understanding of the immunopathogenesis of human neurological disorders by studying the bilateral regulation of innate immunity and autoimmunity in humans and relevant animal models
• Developing strategies for curing autoimmune diseases of the nervous system by reprogramming the immune system to restore normal function
• Developing animal and in vitro models to support preclinical studies
• Studying human responses to experimental therapeutic interventions from the perspective of neural stem cells to repair myelin and to provide neuroprotective factors in the central nervous system
• Training and mentoring doctoral and postdoctoral students, clinical fellows, and resident physicians to prepare them for future careers in neuroimmunology

Achievements

• Showed the organ-specific features and functions of NK cells in situ during inflammation of the central nervous system
• Defined cytokine antibody-immune complexes in expanding regulatory T cells and in inhibiting pathogenic antibody production in myasthenia gravis
• Discovered the potential for using CNS-intrinsic anti-inflammatory neural transmitter in a murine model of multiple sclerosis
• Secured funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) through the year 2015

Shi Laboratory Staff

• Ruolan Liu, MD, PhD
  Research Assistant Professor
• Junwei Hao, MD, PhD
  Postdoctoral Fellow
• Yan Gan, MD, PhD
  Postdoctoral Fellow
• Wei Wu, MD, PhD
  Postdoctoral Fellow
• Alain Simard, PhD
  Postdoctoral Fellow
• Susan Rhodes, MSc
  Laboratory Coordinator
• Chen Wu, BS
  PhD Student

Contact Information

Fu-Dong Shi, MD, PhD
[email protected]