Doran B. Spencer

Doran B. Spencer, M.D., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the Shiley Eye Institute, U.C.S.D. He is a specialist in uveitis and ocular inflammation as well as diseases and surgery of the retina. Dr. Spencer earned a Bachelor’s of Science at the University of Oregon, where he was a student in the Honor’s College. He also obtained a Master’s Degree of Biochemistry at the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 in Lyon, France, where he worked at the Pasteur Institut. He completed his M.D. and a Ph.D. in Immunology at Oregon Health and Science University, where he studied animal models of uveitis. His Ophthalmology residency and Internal Medicine Preliminary training were at the University of California, Irvine. He then completed a year-long Uveitis fellowship with Dr. C. Stephen Foster at the Massachusetts Eye Research and Surgery Institution, where he was a Clinical Instructor in Ophthalmology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School. He then completed his Vitreoretinal surgery fellowship at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been seeing uveitis patients since 2017. He has been honored with many awards, including the National Merit Scholarship and a research award from the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.

      Dr. Spencer’s clinical focus is in the medical and surgical treatment of uveitis and ocular inflammation. Additionally, he treats diseases of the retina both medically and surgically. He is an experienced clinical researcher and participates in numerous clinical trials for uveitis and retinal diseases. This includes several studies of his own design focused on novel clinical findings and imaging modalities for uveitis and retinal diseases. Additionally, he partakes in multiple interdisciplinary collaborations aimed at understanding novel causes of uveitis such as cancer immunotherapy.

      Dr. Spencer’s approach to uveitis prioritizes minimizing damage to the eye from ongoing inflammation. As a Uveitis specialist, Dr. Spencer is trained to manage ocular inflammation with systemic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory treatment, which often results in long-term remission without recurrence of inflammation. When appropriate, this includes a multidisciplinary approach involving collaboration with additional medical specialists at UCSD when the eye inflammation is associated with systemic disease.

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