Caitlin Collin, PhD, Awarded Knights Templar Eye Foundation Grant
Mass. Eye and Ear postdoctoral research fellow Caitlin Collin, PhD, was awarded a Career Starter Grant from the Knights Templar Eye Foundation. The grant will provide $70,000 of support for Dr. Collin’s research on the development of gene editing approaches for ABCA4-associated Stargardt disease.
The Knights Templar Eye Foundation is committed to supporting research that can help launch the careers of clinical and basic researchers focused on the prevention and cure of potentially blinding diseases in infants and children.
Dr. Collin is a lab member of Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology Qin Liu, MD, PhD, within the Harvard Ophthalmology Ocular Genomics Institute. Her other research focuses on developing gene therapies for RP1-associated retinitis pigmentosa.
She is exploring multiple therapeutic approaches in collaboration with industry, including novel viral and non-viral delivery methods, CRISPR/Cas-based gene editing, and oligonucleotide-based gene editing. These works will lay the foundation for applications in other inherited retinal degenerations caused by mutations in large genes.