The Wainger Lab

Dr. Wainger is Associate Professor Neurology and Anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School and an attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. He studied molecular biology as an undergraduate at Princeton University and ion channel physiology in the MD/PhD program at Columbia University. He then completed medical residency in the Partners Neurology Program followed by a clinical fellowship in Pain Medicine at MGH and research fellowship with Clifford Woolf at Boston Children’s Hospital. His clinical expertise spans the intersection of neurology and pain medicine.

Christine earned a degree in biotechnology engineering from Polytech Marseille before completing her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Strasbourg under the mentorship of Dr. Caroline Rouaux. Her doctoral research focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms that cause dysfunction and degeneration of corticospinal motor neurons in ALS, and she developed a protocol for transcriptomic analysis of pure populations of these neurons in ALS mouse models at various disease stages.

In 2018, Christine joined the Wainger lab, where she expanded her expertise in iPSC technology, high-content imaging, and phenotypic screening. Her research is focused on neuroinflammation in ALS, particularly the role of the STING pathway in ALS-vulnerable neurons. She also works on the development of new ALS models and drug screens aimed at identifying modifiers of C9orf72 dipeptide-mediated neurotoxicity and TDP-43 pathology for clinical translation.

In 2023, Christine was promoted to Instructor. She has received individual funding from multiple sources, including the Milton Safenowitz Postdoctoral Fellowship from the ALS Association, the MassCATs award, the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Development Grant 22, and the Mussallem Transformative Scholar Award.

Aaron completed his Ph.D at Brown University with Dr. Kristi Wharton and Dr. Diane Lipscombe. His graduate work focused on the mechanisms of motor dysfunction in Drosophila models of ALS and identifying genetic targets for rescuing motor function.

Aaron joined the Wainger lab in December 2018 to continue researching neurodegenerative mechanisms in ALS and expand his skill set to human iPSCs and bioinformatics. His recent paper highlights the importance of cell-type specificity in ALS and illustrates the ability of iPSCs to model dysfunction seen in ALS patient tissue. Aaron was promoted to Instructor in 2023 and has since reincorporated Drosophila genetics into his scientific workflow. His current project focuses on the molecular mechanisms that cause TDP-43 dysfunction in ALS and how to mitigate downstream neurodegeneration. Aaron has received individual funding from several sources, including a Postdoctoral National Research Service Award (F32), a Cullen Education and Research Foundation Young Investigator Award, and a Mussallem Transformative Scholar Award.

Ben completed his BA at Hamilton college, PhD at UT Arlington & UT Southwestern Medical Center, and MD at Brown University. His dissertation was on long-gap peripheral nerve injuries and neuroma pain. Ben joined the Wainger lab in August, 2021 and is interested in using hiPSCs/SMNs to preserve muscle function after SCI, and gene therapies to limit chronic pain development. He is a neurosurgery resident at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Ben’s work is supported by the 2021-22 NREF Research Fellowship Grant and the 2022-2023 David Borsook Project.

Hagai completed his PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where he studied the mechanisms of stress granule disassembly, which are linked to ALS pathology. After transitioning to industry, Hagai served as the platform team leader at 1E Therapeutics, focusing on oligonucleotide therapeutics. In February 2024, he joined the Wainger lab and is highly interested in the development of antisense oligonucleotides for neurodegenerative diseases.

Courtney completed her BSc and PhD at Queen's University in Canada. During her PhD, she investigated the role of the gut microbiome on pain and neuroinflammation after spinal cord injury, as well as the circadian rhythm of thermal nociception. 

Courtney joined the Wainger lab in March 2024 and is interested in using gene therapy as a therapeutic for chronic pain.

Sanghun is an Instructor in Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Medicine (Physiology) from Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea. He has a specialty in electrophysiology and made unique contributions by employing his expertise in neurophysiology to uncover synaptic dysfunction in the hippocampal circuits using various mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. Sanghun joined the Wainger lab in June 2023 and is interested in ion channels regulation for chronic pain as well as synaptic dysfunction in ALS and FTD.

Remy completed her BS at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Neuroscience, after which she completed a research Fulbright under the guidance of Dr. Siri Leknes at the University of Oslo. She then completed her PhD in Neuroscience at Brown University with Dr. Diane Lipscombe. Her graduate work focused on developing automated behavior methods for evoking and assessing pain behavior in rodents to better understand the role of voltage-gated calcium channels in the development of pain and hypersensitivity.

Remy joined the Wainger lab in January 2025 and is interested in continuing to study mechanisms of pain and potential therapeutics.

Susan received her BA in Human Biology (Neuroscience concentration) from Stanford University and her Ph.D. from the Program in Neuroscience at Harvard. Her thesis work, in the lab of Stefan Thor, centered on interplay of transcriptional regulation and cell-cell signaling in neuronal specification using the Drosophila model system. Following a postdoc with Kristin White at MGH studying cell death in the developing nervous system, she began working as a biocurator at FlyBase, the database of Drosophila genes and genomes, as a genome annotator and literature curator.

Susan joined the Wainger Lab in February of 2023 with an interest in translational research and has been working on the pain gene therapy project.

Research Assistants

Lab Alumni

Post-Doctoral Fellows

• Daniel Debreuil, PhD

  • 2018-2021 | Sanofi

• Joao Pereira, PhD

  • 2015-2021 | University of Alabama, Birmingham - Faculty

• Paloma Gonzalez-Perez, MD, PhD | Instructor

  • 2018-2019 | Massachusetts General Hospital - Faculty

• Haruhiko Banno, PhD

  • 2017-2018 | Kyoto University - Associate Professor

• Anna-Claire Devlin, PhD

  • 2015-2017 | Queens University Belfast

• Yechiam Sapir, PhD

  • 2015 - 2017 | Surgical Monitoring Services (Israel)

Visiting Scholars

• Joo Hyun Nam, Ph.D.

  • 2022-2024 | Dongguk University College of Medicine - Faculty, Department of Physiology

• Xiaofan Lai

  • 2019-2020 | Sun Yat-Sen University - Faculty

Research Assistants

• Lauren Sun

  • 2022-2024 | MD Candidate - University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine

• Adina Mistry

  • 2023-2024 | MD Candidate - Tufts University School of Medicine

• Martha Yates

  • 2022-2024 | PhD Candidate - London Interdisciplinary Biosciences Consortium, King’s College London

• Sharon Powley

  • 2022-2024 | PhD Candidate - Duke Neurobiology

• Gracesenia Chahyadinata

  • 2021-2023 | PhD Candidate - Harvard PhD Program in Neuroscience

• Ashley Battenberg

  • 2021-2022 | MD Candidate - Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine

• Joon Sung

  • 2020-2022 | UC Irvine

• Michelle Adler

  • 2020-2022 | MD/PhD Candidate - Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Saini

• Catherine Song

  • 2021-2022 | Wildtype - Tissue Engineering

• Katherine Dorfman

  • 2019-2021 | MD/PhD Candidate - Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

• Brenda Chiang

  • 2019-2020| MD Candidate - UC Berkeley/UCSF Joint Medical Program

• James Hawrot

  • 2018-2020 | PhD Candidate - Brown University/NIH

• Kevin Zhu

  • 2017-2019 | MD Candidate - University of Michigan Medical School

• Eugene Berezovski

  • 2016-2019 | PhD Candidate - Uniformed Services University

• Joan Koh

  • 2016-2018 | MD Candidate - Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University

• Jenny Shao

  • 2016-2017 | MD Candidate - Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine

• Dan Moakley

  • 2014-2017 | PhD Candidate - Columbia University

• Julian Gal

  • 2015-2016 | MD Candidate - University of Rochester School of Medicine