Ethan Goldberg, MD, PhD – Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Ethan Goldberg, MD, PhD, is a pediatric neurologist in the Division of Neurology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Director of the Epilepsy NeuroGenetics Initiative (ENGIN). He sees patients in the Neurogenetics Clinic at CHOP.
Dr. Goldberg specializes in the diagnosis and care of children with neurodevelopmental disorders including epilepsy, developmental delay/intellectual disability, and autism spectrum disorder. He has a particular interest in the genetic basis of these disorders, and has specific expertise in evaluating and caring for children with Dravet syndrome and other epilepsies due to ion channelopathy such as KCNC1, SCN2A, SCN3A, and SCN8A-related epilepsies.
“I am interested in how alterations in the building blocks of brain function lead to large-scale brain dysfunction such as is seen in these disorders, and in the development of new treatments and potentially cures for such conditions,” he says.
Along with his work at CHOP, Dr. Goldberg is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Goldberg’s research focuses on the mechanisms of these neurodevelopmental disorders. He notes that advances in neurogenetics — the study of the role of genetics in the development and function of the nervous system — have drastically improved diagnoses. Advances in brain science hold promise for innovative new treatments, he says.
“Modern 21st-century neuroscience techniques such as stem cell technology, large-scale electrical recordings, optogenetics, novel imaging techniques, and computational neuroscience approaches allow us to dream of new ways to use genetic information to develop specific therapies,” he says. Learn more about Dr. Goldberg’s research in the Goldberg NeuroLab.
