Leonard Levin, MD, PhD
Dr. Leonard Levin is a tenured professor in the Departments of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences and Neurology & Neurosurgery at 黑料社, and former Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology (2012-2023). He is a physician-scientist at the Neuro, where he carries out research related to optic nerve diseases and related disorders.
Dr. Levin received a bachelor鈥檚 degree magna cum laude in Applied Mathematics at Harvard, where he did an honors thesis designing a language for computer-assisted music composition. He received his MD in the Harvard/MIT joint program in Health Science and Technology and a PhD in neurobiology, focusing on research relevant to multiple sclerosis. He then pursued an ophthalmology residency and neuro-ophthalmology fellowship at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.
His research program focuses on mechanisms of retinal ganglion cell death at the molecular, tissue culture, and whole animal level. This includes the role axonal damage plays in inducing loss of retinal ganglion cells and how axons themselves undergo injury, an area common to ophthalmology and neurology, and one directly tied to optic nerve diseases. He uses advanced imaging techniques to study signaling of cell death in the retina and how this can help in the development of new drugs for optic nerve and retinal disease, including novel drugs that his laboratory has developed. Dr. Levin is particularly interested in the challenges associated with successfully translating basic science research into clinically effective therapies, and has been involved with the design and assessment of clinical trials to study neuroprotective therapies in glaucoma and other optic neuropathies. His funding has been from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the United States National Institutes of Health, the Glaucoma Foundation, the Glaucoma Research Foundation, and several others.
Dr. Levin鈥檚 research has resulted in more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, reviews, and book chapters, and 4 issued patents, all related to eye disease. He has edited five textbooks in ophthalmology or neuro-ophthalmology, including Neuro-Ophthalmology: The Practical Guide, Ocular Disease: Mechanisms and Management, and the 11th and 12th edition of Adler鈥檚 Physiology of the Eye. He has written chapters or edited sections of many of the major textbooks in ophthalmology. He was previously chair of the Diseases and Pathophysiology of the Visual System study section at the United States National Institutes of Health, past chair of the Association of Canadian University Professors of Ophthalmology, and past chair of the Executive Scientific Oversight Committee for the Audacious Goals Initiative at the USA National Eye Institute, which has the major goal to restore sight to those with irreversible blindness.
Levin LA, Bhatti MT, Klier S, Morgenstern R, Szanto D, Miller NR, Kupersmith MJ. A randomized, multicenter, double-masked, sham-controlled phase 2/3 trial of QPI-1007, an siRNA against caspase-2, for acute nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. Ophthalmology doi: .
Remtulla R, Das SK, Levin LA. In silico modeling of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein disulfide bond reduction by phosphine-borane complexes. Pharmaceuticals 17:1417, 2024. doi: 10.3390/ph17111417.
Lambiri DW, Levin LA. Maculopapillary bundle degeneration in optic neuropathies, Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep, 24:203-218, 2024.
Yang F, Almasieh M, Levin LA. In vivo imaging of secondary neurodegeneration associated with phosphatidylserine externalization along axotomized axons. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci, 65:24, 2024.
Levin LA, Chiang MF, Dyer MA, Greenwell TN, Svendsen CN, Tumminia SJ, Van Gelder RN, Wong RO. Translational roadmap for regenerative therapies of eye disease. Med 4:583-590, 2023.
Morocz YM, Greben R, Levin LA. Redox targets for phosphine-boranes. Inorganics, 11:310, inorganics11070310, 2023.
Lambiri DW, Levin LA. Modeling reactive oxygen species-induced axonal loss in Leber hereditary optic neuropathy. Biomolecules, 12:1411, doi.org/10.3390/biom12101411, 2022.
Levin LA, Patrick C, Choudry NB, Sharif, NA, Goldberg JL. Neuroprotection in neurodegenerations of the brain and eye: Lessons from the past and directions for the future. Front Neurol 13:964197, 2022.
Almasieh M, Faris H, Levin LA. Pivotal roles for membrane phospholipids in axonal degeneration. Int J Biochem Cell Biol, 150:106264, 2022.
Van Gelder RN, Chiang MF, Dyer MA, Greenwell TN, Levin LA, Wong RO, Svendsen CN. Progress in regenerative and restorative medicine for degenerative retinal disease. Nat Med, 28:1149-1156, 2022.
Cukurova F, Gustavson BP, Griborio-Guzman AG, Levin LA. A quantitative approach to the spread of variance in translational research using Monte Carlo simulation. Sci Rep, 12:6274, 2022.
Levin LA, Sengupta M, Balcer LJ, Kupersmith MJ, Miller NR. Report from the National Eye Institute workshop on neuro-ophthalmic disease clinical trial endpoints: Optic neuropathies. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci, 62:30, doi.org/10.1167/iovs.62.14.30, 2021.
Geva M, Gershoni-Emek N, Naia L, Ly P, Mota S, Rego AC, Hayden M, Levin LA. Neuroprotection of retinal ganglion cells by pridopidine, a sigma-1 receptor agonist, in models of experimental glaucoma. Sci Rep, 11:21975, doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-01077-w, 2021.
Faris H, Almasieh M, Levin LA. Axonal degeneration induces distinct patterns of phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylethanolamine externalization. Cell Death Discov 7:247, doi.org/10.1038/s41420-021-00641-7, 2021.
Remtulla R, Kumar Das S, Levin LA. Predicting absorption-distribution properties of neuroprotective phosphine-borane compounds using in silico modeling and machine learning. Molecules, 26:2505, 2021.
Rath EZ, Hazan Z, Adamsky K, Segal ZI, Levin LA. Randomized controlled Phase 2a study of RPh201 in previous nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. J Neuro-Ophthalmol, 39:291-298, 2019.
Saragovi HU, Galan A, Levin LA. Neuroprotection: Pro-survival and anti-neurotoxic mechanisms as therapeutic strategies in neurodegeneration. Front Cell Neurosci, 13:231, 2019.
Coussa RG, Merat P, Levin LA. Propagation and selectivity of axonal loss in Leber hereditary optic neuropathy. Sci Rep, 9:6720, 2019.
Chan W, Almasieh M, Catrinescu M, Levin LA. Cobalamin-dependent superoxide scavenging in neuronal cells is a potential mechanism for vitamin B12-deprivation optic neuropathy. Am J Pathol, 188:160-172, 2018.
Levin LA, Behar-Cohen F. The Academic-Industrial Complexity: Failure to Launch. Trends Pharmacol Sci, 38:1052-1060, 2017.
Levin LA, Miller JW, Zack DJ, Friedlander M, Smith LEH. Early clinical development of cell replacement therapy: Considerations for the National Eye Institute Audacious Goals Initiative. Ophthalmology, 124:926-934, 2017.
Almasieh M, Catrinescu M-M, Binan L, Costantino S, Levin LA. Axonal degeneration in retinal ganglion cells is associated with a membrane polarity-sensitive redox process. J Neurosci, 37:3824-3839, 2017.
