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Stephen G. Waxman

Stephen Waxman is an American neurologist and neuroscientist. He is the Bridget Flaherty Professor of Neurology, Neurobiology, and Pharmacology at Yale University. He served as Chairman of the Department of Neurology at Yale Medical School, and Neurologist-in-Chief at Yale-New Haven Hospital from 1986 until 2009. He founded the Neuroscience & Regeneration Research Center at Yale in 1988 and is its Director. Prior to moving to Yale, he worked at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. He is also Visiting Professor at University College London.

Dr. Waxman received his BA from Harvard, and his MD and PhD degrees from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His research uses tools from the "molecular revolution" to find new therapies that will promote recovery of function after injury to the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves.

Biography:

Stephen Waxman was born on August 17, 1945 in Newark NJ. As a child he wanted to be a scientist, and his parents Morris Waxman, a court reporter, and his mother Beatrice Waxman, encouraged him. He was the first person in his family to go to college outside of New Jersey. He received his BA from Harvard in 1967, and his MD and PhD degrees from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1971 and 1972. Following residency in the Harvard Neurology Unit at Boston City Hospital, he joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and MIT where he served, respectively, as Assistant Professor of Neurology and Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology from 1975 to 1977, then as Associate Professor of Neurology and Visiting Associate Professor of Biology from 1977 to 1978. He moved to Stanford Medical School as Professor of Neurology in 1978 and, at Stanford, served as Chairman of the Neuroscience Program and Associate Chairman of Neurology. He moved to Yale Medical School in 1986.

Career and Contributions:

Stephen Waxman has published more than 700 scientific papers. His early research defined the mechanism by which myelin insures rapid conduction of impulses along nerve fibers within the brain and spinal cord. His research has defined the ion channel architecture of nerve fibers, and demonstrated its importance for axonal conduction. He demonstrated increased expression of sodium channels in demyelinated axons, identified the channel isoforms responsible for this remarkable neuronal plasticity which supports remission in multiple sclerosis , and together with Peter Stys and Bruce Ransom, he delineated the roles of sodium channels in axonal degeneration. He has made pivotal discoveries that explain pain after nerve injury. In translational leaps from laboratory to humans, he carried out molecule-to-man studies combining molecular genetics, molecular biology, and biophysics to demonstrate the contribution of ion channels to human pain,. He played a major role in an international coalition that identified sodium channel mutations as causes of peripheral neuropathy. He has used atomic-level modeling to advance pharmacogenomics, first in the laboratory, and then in the clinic in a paper that was accompanied by an editorial stating "there are still relatively few examples in medicine where molecular reasoning has been rewarded with a comparable degree of success". An entirely new class of medications for neuropathic pain, based in part on his work, is currently in Phase II clinical trials,.

Waxman has as edited nine books, and is the author of Spinal Cord Compression and of Clinical Neuroanatomy (translated into eight languages). He has served on the editorial boards of many journals including Annals of Neurology,  Brain,  The Journal of Physiology,  Trends in Neurosciences,  Nature Reviews Neurology, and Trends in Molecular Medicine, and is Editor-in-Chief of The Neuroscientist  and  Neuroscience Letters. He has trained more than 200 academic neurologists and neuroscientists who lead research teams around the world.

Awards:

A member of the National Academy of Medicine, Waxman has served on many advisory councils, including the Board of Scientific Counselors of NINDS. His many honors include the Tuve Award (NIH), the Distinguished Alumnus Award (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), the Dystel Prize and the Wartenberg Award (American Academy of Neurology), both the Middleton Award and the Magnuson Award from the Veterans Administration, and the Soriano Award from the American Neurological Association. He has been honored in Great Britain with The Physiological Society's Annual Prize, an accolade that he shares with Nobel Prize laureates Andrew Huxley, John Eccles, and Alan Hodgkin.