Douglas T. Golenbock BS, MD

Dr. Douglas Golenbock is Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology in the Department of Medicine at UMass. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Microbiology and Physiological Systems. The principal goal of his laboratory is to characterize the receptors used by phagocytes to respond to the presence of microbes. The lab works on several important infectious illnesses. Furthermore, as the mechanisms of inflammation observed in infectious diseases are similar in nature to those associated with sterile inflammation, they also study Alzheimer’s disease. Much of their malaria work is done in the Amazonian city of Porto Velho, Brazil. Virtually all of the work in the lab focuses on two groups of innate immune receptors: Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and Nod-like receptors (NLRs). Their entry into the TLR field was heralded by the discovery that TLR4, and its co-receptor MD-2, mediate responses to bacterial endotoxin, a major cause of septic shock. More recently, they have begun to focus on intracellular nucleic acid receptors both as regulators of IL-1b production and type I interferons.