Jill M. Goldstein, PhD
Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine; Executive Director, Innovation Center on Sex Differences in Medicine
Research Roles/Affiliations
Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Executive Director, Innovation Center on Sex Differences in Medicine
Helen T. Moerschner Endowed MGH Research Institute Chair in Women's Health
Massachusetts General Hospital
Contact Information
Innovation Center on Sex Differences in Medicine
185 Cambridge St. Suite 2000, Rm. 2.298
Boston, MA 02114
E-mail: jill_goldstein@hms.harvard.edu
Relevant Links
Innovation Center on Sex Differences in Medicine website
Harvard Catalyst Profile- Jill Goldstein
Research
Dr. Goldstein is a clinical neuroscientist and population scientist. For >30 years, her lab has been investigating sex differences in disorders of the central nervous system and comorbidity with general medical disorders like cardiovascular disease (CVD). She uses multi-modal imaging and detailed clinical and cognitive phenotyping that are associated with steroid hormones (HPA and HPG) and other physiology (e.g. ANS, immune response), and genetics/genomics. Her program of research, called the Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory of Sex Differences in the Brain (CNL-SD), consists of an interdisciplinary team of investigators, integrating structural and functional brain imaging, psychophysiology, neuroendocrinology, genetics, immune function, and collaborations with animal studies of genes, hormones and the brain.
The lab has contributed to identifying early antecedents, beginning in fetal development (implicating stress and immune pathways) that disrupt the healthy sexual differentiation of the brain that are retained and expressed in adulthood as sex differences in deficits stress and memory circuitries, depression and comorbid cardiac and other physiologic dysfunction. Currently, the lab is focused on early/fetal antecedents to sex differences in the comorbidity of depression, CVD, and Alzheimer’s disease. The work on prenatal programming of chronic diseases is possible given that Dr. Goldstein’s team has followed the New England sites from the National Collaborative Perinatal Project, a prenatal cohort study, established in 1959-66, of mothers who were followed through their pregnancies (with blood stored at NIH) and offspring followed for 7 years. Goldstein’s team and collaborators have located, recruited, and assessed the adult offspring over the last 30 years, employing clinical and cognitive assessments, multi-modal imaging, and blood and cell collection for genetics/genomics, immunologic, hormonal, and cardiometabolic panels.
The studies, known as the New England Family Study (NEFS), enables us to construct case-control, pregnancy exposure, high-risk, and sibling-set comparative studies on early antecedents to sex differences in psychiatric and general medical disorders. Finally, the lab members are developing a novel transcutaneous neuromodulation device to target the neural-cardiac interface in a sex-selective manner. In 2018, the Innovation Center on Sex Differences in Medicine at MGH was launched, whose mission is to enhance discoveries about sex differences in medicine and translate them into developing sex-dependent therapeutics. The CNL-SD lab is central to the Innovation Center. In 2020, we were designated an ORWH-NIMH Specialized Center of Research Excellence on Sex Differences (SCORE). Finally, Dr. Goldstein has a long history (>30 years at Harvard) training the next generation about sex differences in medicine, as she views mentoring as one of her primary responsibilities.
Research Interests
Sex differences in brain; fetal programming; comorbidity of disorders brain and heart; depression; immunology; neuroendocrinology