Hong-Wei Dong, M.D., Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Neurology
VKC Member
Overview of Interests
Rett syndrome (RTT) is a severe progressive genetic neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) characterized by loss of acquired spoken language and volitional hand skills and is associated with cognitive and motor impairments, seizures, sleep disturbance, and apnea. There remains no defined disease-modifying or reversing treatments in RTT. Without well-validated and translatable treatment-response biomarkers in RTT, it limited the progress of preclinical and clinical trials. Dr. Dong's interests focus on characterizing the neurophysiological features in the mouse model of RTT and evaluate their feasibilities of serving as biomarkers to predict disease progress and evaluate phenotypic improvement and treatment responses in preclinical trials, and further exploring their applicability of being translational biomarkers in clinics.