Qing Wang, MD

Dr. Qing Mei Wang is a physiatrist who specializes in the care of patients with stroke. She obtained my PhD and MD at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and completed my residency training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. After completing her residency training, she joined the faculty at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital (SRH), Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Harvard Medical School (HMS), where she provide clinical care, supervise trainees, and conduct research on stroke recovery to enhance our knowledge and the quality of patient care.

Dr. Wang's research interests and expertise revolve around the mechanisms and interventions to promote stroke recovery. She has received funding from the NIH (e.g., K12 grant and currently K08) as well as departmental grants that aim to determine molecular biological mechanisms of stroke recovery and to develop pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions. She is the director in the Stroke Biological Recovery Laboratory at SRH. 

Dr. Wang's research involves cellular, animal and clinical disciplines, aiming to bridge basic science breakthrough to bedside therapy, including genetic study, pharmacological intervention and non-invasive brain stimulation to promote stroke recovery. There are several areas of investigation that are critical to this laboratory’s core mission:

1.Develop novel interventions to promote stroke recovery. To promote functional recovery from stroke has been challenging for both scientists and clinicians. Most of the studies are focusing on single neurorestorative agents. However, the functional recovery after stroke is extremely complex and involves multiple pathways.  Therefore, the combinations of agents are likely to be more effective than single agent therapy. Studies from this lab show promising results of two novel combination therapies (a.  combined atorvastatin and sildenafil; b. combined transcranial direct current stimulation and methylphenidate) for improving motor recovery after stroke. This lab strives to improve the efficacy of these combination therapies and continue to develop new regimens.  

2.Understand the role of inflammation in stroke recovery. There is increasing evidence showing that the neuro-inflammatory response is an important process during stroke recovery and generates both beneficial and detrimental effects. Therefore, it is important to fine tune the immune response after stroke in order to harness the benefits while avoiding detrimental effects. These researchers use serum and primary immune cells from stroke subjects, as well as rodent stroke models, to understand the role of inflammation in stroke recovery. The data show derangement in inflammatory cytokines post-stroke. Further identification of the key players will provide new insight to develop therapeutic interventions.

3.Discover biomarkers to predict recovery and to serve as surrogate to evaluate the responsiveness to therapy for developing individualized therapy. The role of blood biomarkers in stroke recovery is still unclear. These researchers have been building bio-bank database including functional outcomes and blood samples. The current bio-bank database has blood samples and data from 300 stroke patients. Ongoing research is investigating the association of brain derived neurotrophic factor with functional outcome.