Cure Alzheimer's Fund Cure Alzheimer's Fund

Changning Wang, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School; Assistant in Chemistry, Massachusetts General Hospital

Changning Wang, Ph.D., has a unique and broad background in molecular imaging, medicinal chemistry, pharmaceutical sciences and neuroscience. After finishing his doctoral studies, he joined Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging as a research fellow and later as a trainee in the Harvard/MGH Nuclear Medicine Training Program, to expand his research skills in clinical imaging research. He is now an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. In the past few years, he has developed [11C]Martinostat as a robustly brain penetrant imaging agent with selectivity for class I HDACs. [11C]Martinostat is the first and only-to-date PET imaging probe for epigenetic research. He designed this probe in only a half year, an extremely short time. The exploratory IND for [11C]Martinostat was approved by the FDA for first-in-human trials and is the first tool of its kind available to characterize HDAC expression in the living human brain. Dr. Wang is leading the project of [11C]Martinostat clinical imaging in several patient groups. He is also working on developing new PET imaging probes targeting other epigenetic enzymes and using these tools for new drug discovery.

Martinos Center

Related Research:

Characterization of CNS-Penetrant HDAC11-Selective Inhibitors in Alzheimer’s Disease Models Can (Martin) Zhang Changning Wang 2023-03-21

Funded Research

These projects were made possible from Cure Alzheimer's Fund support.

Project Description Researchers Funding
Characterization of CNS-Penetrant HDAC11-Selective Inhibitors in Alzheimer’s Disease Models 2023, 2024

$402,500

Selected Publications

These published papers resulted from Cure Alzheimer’s Fund support.

Bai, P., Lan, Y., Liu, Y., Mondal, P., Gomm, A., Xu, Y., Wang, Y., Wang, Y., Kang, L., Pan, L., Bagdasarian, F. A., Hallisey, M., Varela, B., Choi, S. H., Gomperts, S. N., Wey, H. Y., Shen, S., Tanzi, R. E., Wang, C., & Zhang, C. Development of a New Positron Emission Tomography Imaging Radioligand Targeting RIPK1 in the Brain and Characterization in Alzheimer’s Disease, Advanced Science, June 25, 2024, Read More

Mondal, P., Bai, P., Gomm, A., Bakiasi, G., Lin, C. J., Wang, Y., Choi, S. H., Tanzi, R. E., Wang, C., & Zhang, C. Structure-Based Discovery of A Small Molecule Inhibitor of Histone Deacetylase 6 (HDAC6) that Significantly Reduces Alzheimer’s Disease Neuropathology, Advanced Science, November 21, 2023, Read More

Bai, P., Liu, Y., Yang, L., Ding, W., Mondal, P., Sang, N., Liu, G., Lu, X., Ho, T. T., Zhou, Y., Wu, R., Birar, V. C., Wilks, M. Q., Tanzi, R. E., Lin, H., Zhang, C., Li, W., Shen, S., & Wang, C. Development and Pharmacochemical Characterization Discover a Novel Brain-Permeable HDAC11-Selective Inhibitor with Therapeutic Potential by Regulating Neuroinflammation in Mice, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, November 16, 2023, Read More

Liu, G., Mondal, P., Sang, N., Li, Z., Ding, W., Yang, L., Liu, Y., Birar, V. C., Gomm, A., Tanzi, R. E., Zhang, C., Shen, S., Wang, C., Lu, X., & Bai, P. Design, synthesis, and anti-inflammatory activity characterization of novel brain-permeable HDAC6 inhibitors, European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, March 31, 2023, Read More

Back to Our Researchers