
Steve Bernstein, M.D.
Stem Cells and Glaucoma Prevention
Location: THE COSMOS CLUB, 2121 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20006
Please join us for the Winter Meeting on 7 February 2024
Cocktails start at 6:00 PM and dinner is served at 6:45 PM
Dr. Roselyn E. Epps, M.D. will convene the Annual Meeting at 7:15 PM
The speaker will be introduced at 7:30 PM
Please RSVP by 22 January 2024 with the Secretary at Secretary@acadmeddc.org. Fee for a guest is $60, payable by check at the meeting. Please let the Secretary know of any special dietary requests.
About the Speaker
Steve Bernstein is a tenured Professor of Ophthalmology and Vice Chair of Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He is also affiliated with the Departments of Neurobiology, and Genetics. He’s a Scientist and Comprehensive Ophthalmologist. He received his Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Behavior, in analysis of gene expression in cerebellar developmental at Cornell University and got his MD at SUNY-Downstate.
After doing a clinical genetics fellowship at the NEI, he also did a postdoctoral research fellowship, and pioneered expressed sequence tag (EST) analysis in aging human retina, identifying age-related gene expression changes. He moved to UMB in 1996 and generated the first clinically relevant model of optic nerve stroke (non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy: NAION) in rodents and nonhuman primates. NAION is a CNS white matter stroke, and thus treatments for NAION are likely to be effective in treating other white matter ischemic injury in the brain.
In 2011, he discovered optic nerve neural stem/progenitor cells while on Sabbatical at the NY neural stem cell institute, working with Sally Temple and Jeff stern there. During his second Sabbatical in 2020-21, he identified the gene expression pattern of the optic nerve head, using single cell sequencing, and while in Germany determined that Huntingtins disease causes changes in retinal processing, resulting in loss of night vision. His current projects are: 1) identification of effective treatment for optic nerve stroke. 2) Identifying the role of optic nerve stem cells in glaucoma prevention.