DR. ALEXANDRA CASTILLEJOS

Dr. Alexandra G. Castillejos Ellenthal is a local San Diegan. She graduated from Columbia University with her BA in Biology and a minor in Anthropology. While at Columbia, she received a Genentech Grant for a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship and spent her summers volunteering abroad in India and Ghana with the non-profit organization Unite for Sight. She earned her MD from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. While there, Dr. Castillejos served as President of the Ophthalmology Interest Group, where she was instrumental in creating a new ophthalmology shadowing program that allowed students to explore ophthalmology as a specialty early in medical school. She also organized monthly Free Vision Clinics which provided free eye care to underserved populations. She next went to Harvard Medical School/ Mass. Eye and Ear for ophthalmology residency training where she developed a passion for treating Glaucoma, in underserved and diverse patient groups, and tailoring care to community needs. She next matched to the Duke Glaucoma Fellowship Program, one of the premier glaucoma training institutions in the United States, where she was under the clinical and surgical mentorship of leaders in the field of Glaucoma.

Dr. Castillejos’ research during medical school included work in the pathogenesis of primary open-angle glaucoma, as well as visual parameters on NFL quarterbacks. For her work, she was recognized with a Young Investigator Student Fellowship Award for Female Scholars in Vision Research from Prevent Blindness Ohio. She also worked on retinal angiogenesis with Mass. Eye and Ear faculty member Kip Connor, PhD, exploring the role of the classical lectin and alternative complement pathways in retinal detachment and retinopathy of prematurity. Also at Mass. Eye and Ear, she worked with Lucy Q. Shen, MD on the use of visual fields and optical coherence tomography (OCT) for Keratoprosthesis (KPro) patients. She has been published in journals such as Ophthalmology Glaucoma, The Ocular Surface, Science Translational Medicine, and Biomacromolecules, and she has presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Annual Meeting and for the American Glaucoma Society (AGS).