Eric Benner

Eric Benner, M.D. Ph.D., CSO, is the scientific co-founder of Tellus and an attending neonatologist at Duke University. He earned his MD and PhD in neuroscience from the University of Nebraska Medical Center before completing his pediatric residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a neonatal perinatal medicine fellowship at Duke University. He has over 10 years of experience caring for neonates with brain injury. Eric’s laboratory made the novel discovery that oxysterols present in human maternal breast milk promote oligodendrocyte (myelinating cells) differentiation in postnatal neural stem cells. Using animal models of perinatal white matter injury, his lab has shown that these compounds can reverse white matter injury and associated motor deficits. Eric has a personal connection to premature infants that drives his desire to improve the lives of these affected children. His own twin boys were born 3 months early.