Jonathan Lass, MD

Dr. Jonathan H. Lass is recognized as an Expertscape Expert in Corneal Endothelium for being in the top 1% of scholars with published work about Corneal Endothelium over the past 10 years. He has research interests in the area of corneal function and immunology, genetics, cornea image analysis, and clinical trials of corneal disease, with over 200 publications with active funding from the NEI for these studies. He contributed to major advances in corneal preservation and transplantation including the NEI-funded Cornea Donor Study examining the effect of donor age on transplant survival and endothelial cell loss. This study reported its 10-year findings showing that donor age did not impact survival of the transplant for the great majority of donor corneas available in the United States. He then served as the study chair of the NEI funded multi-center prospective trial, the Cornea Preservation Time Study, which examined the effect of preservation time of the donor on graft survival and endothelial cell loss following Descemet stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty (DSAEK). The study found that corneas could be preserved longer than previously practiced out to 11 days of storage without impacting graft success and endothelial cell loss. Numerous other factors were also discovered impacting DSAEK outcomes to guide best practices presented in 12 publications that have come out since 2015 in high profile journals. He is now the study chair the NEI-funded multi-center prospective clinical trial, the Diabetes Endothelial Keratoplasty Study (DEKS) that will examine the impact of diabetes and its severity in the donor and recipient on Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) outcomes. With diabetes in nearly 40% of the donor pool, determining which donors with diabetes are suitable and which are not is a very important question to address.