Associate Professor
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Santa Monica, CA, USA
Dr. Bernthal is an Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Chief of the Division of Musculoskeletal Oncology, and is currently serving as Interim Chair and Executive Medical Director. He is a surgeon-scientist who leads one of the busiest sarcoma practices in the country while leading an NIH-funded basic science laboratory.
Dr. Bernthal’s laboratory developed and published a mouse model of post-arthroplasty infection that has become widely used by academics, regulatory officials, and industry. The model leverages a panel of bioluminescent bacteria to allow longitudinal real-time in vivo tracking of infection while using immunomodulated mice so that fluorescence imaging can track immune response. This model has produced twenty peer-reviewed papers, numerous grants, and multiple awards, but perhaps most importantly, has been adopted by scientists from industry, academia, and the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Bernthal was selected to lead the Orthopaedic Research Society’s 2017 symposium on “The Infected Implant” and represent the American Orthopaedic Association as an American-British-Canadian Traveling Fellow in 2017. He serves on the Executive Board of the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society and on the Board of Trustees for the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation.
Dr. Bernthal was born and raised in Washington D.C. He played Varsity Basketball at Princeton University while studying political science. He earned his medical degree from Cornell Medical School and did his residency at UCLA. He completed two fellowships -one in Orthopedic Research at UCLA and the other at the Huntsman Cancer Institute - and has been on faculty at UCLA since 2013.