Stephen Waxman

Biography

Stephen Waxman is the Bridget Flaherty Professor of Neurology, Neurobiology, and Pharmacology at Yale University, and served as Chairman of Neurology at Yale from 1986 until 2009.   He founded and is Director of the Neuroscience & Regeneration Research Center at Yale.   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.  Dr. Waxman's research has defined the ion channel architecture of nerve fibers, and demonstrated its importance for axonal conduction (Science, 1985).  He demonstrated increased expression of sodium channels in demyelinated axons (Science, 1982), identified the channel isoforms responsible for this remarkable neuronal plasticity which supports remission in multiple sclerosis (PNAS, 2004), and delineated the roles of sodium channels in axonal degeneration (PNAS, 1993).  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 (Trends in Molec.Med, 2005; PNAS, 2006).  He led an international coalition that identified sodium channel mutations as causes of peripheral neuropathy (PNAS, 2012) and has used atomic-level  modeling to advance pharmacogenomics (Nature Comm., 2012).  An entirely new class of medications for neuropathic pain, based largely on his work, are in Phase II clinical trials. Dr. Waxman has published more than 600 scientific papers.  He 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  Brain,  Annals of Neurology,  Trends in Neurosciences,  Nature Reviews Neurology, The Journal of Physiology, and Trends in Molecular Medicine, and is Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience Letters.  He has trained more than 150 academic neurologists and neuroscientists who lead research teams around the world. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. 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 of 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.

Research Interest

Neurology