Mark Kleinman, MD

Throughout my medical and post-doctoral education, I have been deeply fascinated by the fields of vascular and aging biology, microsurgery, and biomedical technology. I have embraced the profession of vitreoretinal surgery, an art that wholly encompasses all of these interests. My career goals are to obtain mastery of the diagnosis and treatment of vitreoretinal disease and to combine my expertise in the basic and clinical sciences to advance the understanding of vascular and aging diseases of the eye. My research is focused on developing models of epigenetic regulation of inflammation in aging diseases of the retina. Currently, most scientific understanding of epigenetic biology is in the field of development and cancer. In my early career period, I have been investigating various pathways of pro-inflammatory signaling in the retina and have recently discovered a powerful ability for biochemical modification of histones, a protein that complexes with DNA to form the nucleosome, to regulate the expression of specific inflammatory factors found in AMD. With this solid foundation in the biomedical sciences, I plan to rigorously dissect the molecular mechanisms of this pathway to determine the role and effects of histone modification in the healthy and diseased retina.