Howard Weiner

Mass General Brigham Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA | USA

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 investigates five major brain diseases: Multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, Parkinson’s disease and brain tumors. He has pioneered immunotherapy in MS and the study of the mucosal immune system and the microbiome. His discoveries in basic neuroimmunology have been translated to human disease. Most recently, he has shown that nasal administration of anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody induces Tregs that dampen microglial inflammation as measured by microglial PET imaging and is currently in clinical trials in MS, AD, ALS and MSA. 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 Subsequently, two endowed chairs in his name have been established at the Bigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Weiner 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. In 2024 he received the Giants of MS award for his MS research. The Weiner Prize in Neuroimmunology was established in 2025 to recognize outstanding achievement in the field of neuroimmunology by a scientist or clinician. He is the author of the books Curing MS and The Brain Under Siege. He wrote and directed the award-winning documentary What is Life? The Movie and the award-winning film Abe & Phil’s Last Poker Game starring Martin Landau and Paul Sorvino.