Haydee Bazan Named to Ophthalmologist's 2022 Power List
Leslie Capo, Director of Information Services
Haydee E. P. Bazan, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience, Ophthalmology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, has been named to the Ophthalmologist Power List 2022. According to the magazine, the list features “the Top 100 most influential people in the world of ophthalmology” and includes “genuine giants of clinical practice and vision research - and each one was nominated by you and then plucked from the long list of 450 names by our international panel of 20 judges.”
One of Dr. Bazan's nominators wrote, “Haydee Bazan has been NIH-funded for the last 35 years and has extensive service in study sections. She mentored graduate students, fellows, medical students, and young scientists interested in ophthalmology. Her awards include a Role Model for the Young Leadership Council of the City of New Orleans, LSU School of Medicine's Honorary Alumnus, LSU Excellence in Mentoring, and ARVO Gold Fellow. She has organized national/international meetings.”
Bazan's research interests include signal transduction mechanisms of lipids and growth factors involved in inflammation and repair during corneal wound healing, the regeneration of injured nerves, and the prevention of dry eye disease. Her lab was the first to describe the complete human corneal nerve architecture, which led to the detection of abnormalities in corneal nerves in insulin-dependent diabetes and corneal dystrophies. She discovered a new lipid messenger (RvD6i) that drives corneal nerve regeneration and most recently found that it also blocks the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein from binding to receptors and entering cells in the eye.