Stephen Waxman is the Bridget Flaherty Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience and Pharmacology at Yale University, where he served as Chairman of Neurology from 1986 until 2009. He founded and directs Yale’s Neuroscience & Regeneration Research Center. Prior to Yale, he held faculty positions at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.
Dr. Waxman’s research capitalizes on the “molecular revolution” to develop new therapies that restore function after nervous system injury. He has published more than 800 scientific papers. His H-index is 126 and his papers have been cited more than 60,000 times.
Dr. Waxman’s first paper in Nature was published in 1970. His subsequent papers in Science, PNAS and Nature defined the ion channel architecture of nerve fibers, and demonstrated its importance for axonal conduction. He discovered the sodium channel plasticity that supports recovery of impulse conduction in demyelinated axons, both in animal models and within the human CNS in MS. Using molecular genetics, molecular biology, and biophysics, he made a molecule-to-man translational leap from laboratory to humans that uncovered the role of ion channels in human pain. He then led an international team that identified sodium channel mutations as causes of peripheral neuropathy. He has used atomic-level modeling to advance pharmacogenomics in a study, accompanied by a JAMA editorial stating “there are few examples in clinical medicine where molecular reasoning has been rewarded with comparable success”. A new class of non-addictive pain medications, based largely on his work as described in NEJM and the New York Times, is in Phase II/III clinical trials. He is now pinpointing “pain resilience” genes. His latest study in Nature characterizes an ion channel that controls joint degeneration in osteoarthritis.
Waxman has authored Spinal Cord Compression and Clinical Neuroanatomy (translated into 8 languages). He has served on multiple editorial boards including Annals of Neurology, Brain, Journal of Physiology, Trends in Molecular Medicine, and Nature Reviews Neurology. He is the Editor of The Neuroscientist. His trainees lead research teams throughout the world.
Dr. Waxman is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and served on the Board of Scientific Counselors of NINDS. His honors include the Dystel Prize and Wartenberg Award (Amer. Acad. of Neurology), the Middleton Award and Magnuson Award (Veterans Admin), and the Soriano Award (Amer. Neurol. Assn). He was honored with the British Physiological Society’s Annual Prize, an accolade he shares with his heroes Nobel Prize laureates Andrew Huxley, John Eccles, and Alan Hodgkin. Most recently, he received the Mitchell Max Award (Amer. Acad. of Neurology), and the Julius Axelrod Prize (Society for Neuroscience).
Don’t miss the keynote presentation at 1:30 PM on April 5th in Salon C “Huxley’s Science Fiction: Ion Channels in Pain, Pain Resilience and Beyond,” exploring molecular mechanisms of pain and non-addictive treatments.
