Douglas L Feinstein

Research Professor

College of Medicine at Chicago - Clinical Sciences
Department of Anesthesiology

Research Interests

Our research mainly focuses on the disease Multiple Sclerosis which affects about 1 million people in the USA. For this we do experiments using cells prepared from the brain, including astrocytes, microglia, neurons, and oligodendrocytes (OLs). The OLs are the cells that synthesize myelin which wraps around axons, and is lost in MS. We treat the cells with a variety of drugs to see which reduce the 'toxic' actions of some of the cells, which increase neuronal survival, and which cause the OLs to make more myelin.
To gain a better understanding of the disease, we use 2 different mouse models of MS. In one, the mice develop disease symptoms similar to MS patients, and we use this model to test if our drugs reduce those symptoms, and reduce brain pathology. In the 2nd model we treat mice with a chemical that causes them to lose myelin, and we then test if our drugs can increase myelin recovery.
We also carry out genetic studies which are looking at "SNPs", single nucleotide polymorphisms that can increase the risk of getting MS. We obtain DNA samples from large cohorts of MS patients and controls from around the world, carry out PCR assays to test for these SNPs, then use bioinformatics approaches to see how the SNPs associate with race, gender, age, and other variables.

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