Mel Feany, M.D., Ph.D.

Professor of Pathology · Harvard Medical School
Associate Pathologist and Neuropathologist · Brigham and Women's Hospital

mel_feany@hms.harvard.edu
77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA
Feany Laboratory

The longstanding goal of the research in Dr. Feany’s laboratory has been to understand the molecular and biochemical pathways leading to neuronal dysfunction and death in neurodegenerative disorders, including both common adult disorders, as well as rarer childhood neurodegenerative disorders. To that end, they have created models relevant to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis, Alexander’s disease, and related disorders in the genetically tractable organism Drosophila.

Dr. Feany and her team have carried out large-scale forward genetic screens and microarray analyses in their models and have identified pathways, including excessive stabilization of the actin cytoskeleton, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, lysosomal dysfunction, and cell cycle activation that mediate neurotoxicity in our fly models.

Dr. Feany’s laboratory and others have demonstrated that many of these pathways also appear to contribute to neuropathology in mammalian models and in human disease.


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