Working Together to Understand, Protect and Restore Vision
We’re pleased that Chancellor Mnookin has chosen to highlight research from MERI Director David Gamm’s lab to launch her new webpage on transformative, federally funded work happening right now at UW–Madison. You can read about the Gamm Lab’s research here and learn more about our university’s other impactful, cutting-edge research projects by visiting the Chancellor’s webpage here.
The McPherson Eye Research Institute is pleased to announce the winners of our inaugural Grant Accelerator Program (GAP) award competition! Supported by the Alice McPherson Endowment Fund for the Visual Sciences, the Van Vreede McPherson ERI Greatest Needs Fund, the Robert A. Brandt Macular Degeneration Fund, and additional donors to the McPherson ERI, the Grant Accelerator Program …
In a new study published in Stem Cell Reports, the Gamm Lab partnered with researchers at the Morgridge Institute for Research to develop lab-grown pig retinal organoids. They found that pig-derived photoreceptors shared many similarities with those made from human retinal organoids. The researchers have now begun to do transplants in pigs using photoreceptors from the …
Congratulations to MERI PI and Retina Research Foundation Murphy Chair Prof. Krishanu Saha (WID, CoE, SMPH), who was recently named by STAT News as one of the 10 scientists who are moving CRISPR gene editing forward! Among other things, Saha’s current research is leveraging the power of CRISPR to develop new therapies for previously untreatable …
Roger and Lynn Van Vreede have been married for 35 years and have also counted 35 years of supporting charitable causes together. Their interests align well—both are lovers of the arts, and passionate gardeners and environmentalists. (As Lynn says: “When we were kids, we’d take our shoes and socks off and run in the water…. …
Congratulations to Raunak Sinha, the McPherson ERI’s David and Nancy Walsh Family Professor, for his group’s latest publication in Nature Communications! In their article, Saha et al. show that light adaptation, our visual system’s ability to adjust its photoreceptors’ light sensitivity so that we can see over a range of light levels, varies across regions …
Prof. Akihiro Ikeda Dept. of Medical Genetics, SMPH Timothy William Trout Professor in Eye Research Congratulations to MERI member Prof. Akihiro Ikeda (Dept. of Medical Genetics, SMPH; Timothy William Trout Professor in Eye Research) on receiving an NIH NEI grant for his project “Role of mitochondrial dynamics in rod photoreceptor cells”! Prof. Ikeda’s study will …
BlueRock Therapeutics LP, a clinical stage cell therapy company and subsidiary of Bayer AG, today announced the clearance of its Investigational New Drug (IND) application by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for OpCT-001, an investigational induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based cell therapy for the treatment of primary photoreceptor diseases. Discoveries over the past …
BlueRock Therapeutics LP, a clinical stage cell therapy company and subsidiary of Bayer AG, today announced the clearance of its Investigational New Drug (IND) application by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for OpCT-001, an investigational induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based cell therapy for the treatment of primary photoreceptor diseases. Discoveries over the …
Andreas Velten, PhD, Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, has received a 2024 Test of Time award from SIGGRAPH, the international meeting on graphics research. The award, which was for Velten’s 2013 research paper titled Femto-Photography: Capturing and Visualizing the Propagation of Light, is given to authors of earlier SIGGRAPH meeting papers that have had …