STEPHEN G. WAXMAN, M.D., Ph.D. Stephen G. Waxman, M.D., Ph.D. has served as Professor and Chairman of Neurology at Yale since 1986.  He exemplifies the bridge between basic science and clinical medicine, and the transition from laboratory to bedside.  He is the founding director of the PVA/EPVA Neuroscience Research Center, located at the VA Medical Center, West Haven.  Dr. Waxman holds concurrent appointments as Professor of Neurobiology and Pharmacology at Yale, and Visiting Professor of Clinical Neurology, Anatomy and Biology at University College London and the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London.  He is the Co-Director of the Yale-London Collaboration on CNS Repair and Director of the VA Rehabilitiation R&D Center for Restoration of Function in Spinal Cord Injury and Multiple Sclerosis. Dr. Waxman received his BA from Harvard, and his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees (1970, 1972) from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  Following his Neurology Residency at Boston City Hospital/Harvard Medical School he held faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, MIT, and Stanford Medical School prior to moving to Yale in 1986.  Dr. Waxman has received international recognition for his research, which focuses molecular techniques on the brain and spinal cord, with the goal of finding new therapies for multiple sclerosis and related disorders. Dr. Waxman has published more than 400 scientific papers, has authored the clinical text Spinal Cord Compression and the textbook Correlative Neuroanatomy, and has edited five books.  He has served on the editorial boards of many journals including Annals of Neurology, Trends in Neurosciences, Brain Research, and Muscle & Nerve, and he has trained more than one hundred and fifty neurologists and neuroscientists who work at academic institutions around the world. A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Waxman has served on numerous advisory boards and councils, including the Board of Scientific Counselors of the NINDS.   He is an Established Investigator of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and has received many awards including the Trygve Tuve Award from NIH, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Wartenberg Award from the American Academy of Neurology and the John Dystel Prize for Multiple Sclerosis Research, awarded jointly by the American Academy of Neurology and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. "Our research team is working around the clock to understand MS, and to find new treatments that will restore normal function in people with MS.  Destination Cure is an important ally in our battle against MS. It's dollars help us to test novel ideas, launch new pilot projects, purchase much-needed equipment, and carry out this research.  Support from Destination Cure is helping to propel our research program forward in its battle against MS." Stephen G. Waxman, M.D., Ph.D. Chairman, Dept. of Neurology Yale University School of Medicine Research Synopsis Dr. Stephen G. Waxman’s research focuses on a single and very important theme: preservation and restoration of function in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and related disorders.  The goal of his research is to restore vital functions such as the ability to walk, the ability to see and the ability to feel sensations in people with MS.  His research is unique in that it uses state-of-the-art, highly sophisticated methods of biomedical research and moves back and forth between the clinic and the laboratory, thus greatly accelerating the translation of basic research to the clinical realm. Dr. Waxman’s early work on the characteristics of impulse conduction in normal and demyelinated nerve fibers within the brain and spinal cord has provided a basis for much of what we know today about the pathophysiology of demyelination in MS.  His research in the laboratory and clinic has opened up the opportunity to induce remissions in MS.  His team is now focussing on the induction of remissions. Dr. Waxman also carried out the first studies on molecular mechanisms of axonal degeneration within the spinal cord and brain.  This is of great clinical importance because degeneration of axons produces permanent (non-remitting) deficits in MS.  By elucidating the molecular mechanisms responsible for axonal degeneration in the spinal cord and brain, these studies have opened up new approaches to therapies of neuroprotection that can preserve axons and thus restore function in people with MS. Dr. Waxman’s research is also directly relevant to neuropathic pain (pain after injury to nerve cells).  Pain and other distressing sensory symptoms occurs in more that 50% of patients with MS.  In many cases, it does not respond to currently available treatments. Dr. Waxman’s seminal studies using molecular biological and biophysical methods are beginning to unravel the events that produce pain in MS, opening up the door to the development of new treatments. Dr. Waxman has published more than 400 scientific papers dealing with these topics.  The most important include:  Waxman, S. G.: Demyelination in spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis: What can we do to enhance functional recovery?  J. Neurotrauma, 9:S105-S117, 1992. Stys, P.K., Waxman, S.G. and Ransom, B.R.:  Ionic mechanisms of anoxic injury in mammalian CNS white matter: Role of Na+ channels and Na+-Ca2+ exchanger.  J. Neurosci., 12:430-439, 1992. Waxman, S.G.   Demyelinating diseases:  New pathological insights, new therapeutic targets.  New England Journal of Medicine.  338:323-325, 1998. Waxman S.G., Dib-Hajj S., Cummins T.R., Black J.A.  Sodium channels and pain. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 96: 7635-7639, 1999. Black, J. A., Dib-Hajj, S., Baker, D., Newcombe, J., Cuzner, M. L., Waxman, S. G.  Sensory neuron specific sodium channel SNS is abnormally expressed in the brains of mice with experimental allergic encephalomyelitis and humans with multiple sclerosis.  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 97: 11598-11602, 2000. Waxman, S. G.  Transcriptional channelopathies:  an emerging class of disorders.  Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2: 652-659, 2001. Dr. Waxman has also edited or co-authored several texts which have had very significant impact.  These include: The Axon (edited by Waxman, Kocsis, and Stys, Oxford University Press, 1995) is unique in providing the only contemporary text which covers both normal and pathological axons.  It spans from the molecular to the clinical, and has helped to push axonal diseases, such as MS, into the mainstream of contemporary biomedical research. Diseases of the Spine and Spinal Cord (Byrne, Benzel, and Waxman, Oxford University Press, 2000) and its predecessor Spinal Cord Compression (Byrne and Waxman, F.A. Davis, 1990) are the definitive clinical texts on spinal cord compression and related disorders. Dr. Waxman has served as supervisor/mentor for more than 100 neurologists- and neuroscientists-in-training with interests in CNS plasticity and recovery of function in disorders such as MS, including many who have now developed their own independent laboratories and gone on to leadership positions around the world. Finally, as the founding Director of the PVA/EPVA Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research, Dr. Waxman has brought together the Department of Veterans Affairs, Yale University, and the PVA/EPVA in a uniquely productive collaboration that provides a model of inter-institutional cooperation.  Via the Yale-London Collaboration on Neural Repair, which Dr. Waxman established and co-directs, there is now an active, ongoing collaboration between researchers within the Department of Veterans Affairs, Yale University, and several institutions in London, all focused on MS and related disorders and on the search for new therapies that will restore function in people with MS.  Dr. Waxman has organized and chaired numerous scientific symposia and workshops, including the 2000 NMSS workshop on Neuronal Injury in MS, and the 2000 Novartis Foundation Symposium on Sodium Channels, Neuronal Hyperexcitability, and Neuropathic Pain.