Wolfram C. Poller, M.D.

Interventional Cardiologist and Principal Investigator, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School


Dr. Poller is an interventional cardiologist at the MGH Corrigan Minehan Heart Center and a principal investigator at the MGH Cardiovascular Research Center. He is a member of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Poller obtained his Doctor of Medicine (MD) from Charité University Hospital in Berlin, Germany, in 2011. His doctoral thesis (summa cum laude) investigated reward circuitries in the brain and identified the lateral habenula as an important crossroad between homeostatic areas and reward circuitries. He is clinically trained in general and interventional cardiology. Dr. Poller joined the Swirski Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in 2018 and received a Research Fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG). He then served as an Instructor of Medicine in the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He investigated interactions between the brain and the immune system and their impact on inflammatory and autoimmune diseases using state-of-the-art technologies for neuromodulation, including chemogenetics and optogenetics, brain region-specific knockout mice, as well as mono- and polysynaptic viral tracing.

Related Research:

Funded Research

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

Selected Publications

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

Chan, K. L., Poller, W. C., Swirski, F. K., & Russo, S. J. Central regulation of stress-evoked peripheral immune responses, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, August 25, 2023, Read More

McAlpine, C. S., Kiss, M. G., Zuraikat, F. M., Cheek, D., Schiroli, G., Amatullah, H., Huynh, P., Bhatti, M. Z., Wong, L. P., Yates, A. G., Poller, W. C., Mindur, J. E., Chan, C. T., Janssen, H., Downey, J., Singh, S., Sadreyev, R. I., Nahrendorf, M., Jeffrey, K. L., Scadden, D. T., Naxerova, K., St-Onge, M., & Swirski, F.K. Sleep exerts lasting effects on hematopoietic stem cell function and diversity, Journal of Experimental Medicine, September 21, 2022, Read More

Janssen, H., Kahles, F., Liu, D., Downey, J., Koekkoek, L. L., Roudko, V., D'Souza, D., McAlpine, C. S., Halle, L., Poller, W. C., Chan, C. T., He, S., Mindur, J. E., Kiss, M. G., Singh, S., Anzai, A., Iwamoto, Y., Kohler, R. H., Chetal, K., Sadreyev, R. I., Weissleder, R., Kim-Schulze, S., Merad, M., Nahrendorf, M., & Swirski, F. K. Monocytes re-enter the bone marrow during fasting and alter the host response to infection, Immunity, February 23, 2023, Read More

McAlpine, C. S., Park, J., Griciuc, A., Kim, E., Choi, S. H., Iwamoto, Y., Kiss, M. G., Christie, K. A., Vinegoni, C., Poller, W. C., Mindur, J. E., Chan, C. T., He, S., Janssen, H., Wong, L. P., Downey, J., Singh, S., Anzai, A., Kahles, F., Jorfi, M., Feruglio, P.F., Sadreyev, R. I., Weissleder, R., Kleinstiver, B. P., Nahrendorf, M., Tanzi, R. E., & Swirski, F. K. Astrocytic interleukin-3 programs microglia and limits Alzheimer’s disease, Nature, July 14, 2021, Read More