Cherrell Price, a third-year medical student atMorehouse School of Medicine and a 2021 alumna ofHarvard Ophthalmology's Research Scholars Program,is the recipient of the Research to Prevent Blindness(RPB) Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship. Thisfellowship allows gifted students to take a year off frommedical school and devote time to the... Read More

Proctor Medal: Eric A. Pierce, MD, PhD, FARVO (BI) Eric Pierce is the Chatlos Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and the founding director of the Ocular Genomics Institute at Mass Eye and Ear. Pierce’s research program is focused on improving our understanding of the genetic causality of inherited retinal degenerations... Read More

Dr. Marcela Garita-Hernandez from Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts was awarded a $70,000 grant entitled: Modeling NMNAT1-Associated Early Onset Retinal Degeneration Using hiPSC-Derived Retinal Organoids Blindness can be caused by mutations affecting the different cells of the retina. One of these... Read More

During the 2022 fiscal year, the Foundation added 23 new research projects to its portfolio, an investment totaling more than $15 million. One of the Individual Investigator Research Awardees we'd like to highlight is Kinga Bujakowska, PhD, of Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bujakowska's research is on “Exon skipping as... Read More

Researchers Zheng-Yi Chen, DPhil, and Qin Liu, MD, PhD, are combining forces to combat a rare disease that leads to blindness and deafness. Watch this video of  Read More

Precision Medicine at work for patients with Inherited Retinal Disorders https://youtu.be/FXdHVi9szb8 Rachel Huckfeldt, MD, PhD of the Inherited Retinal Disorders (IRD) Service and the Ocular Genomics Institute, speaks about the important collaborations between... Read More

Caitlin CollinQin Liu At the virtual 2021 meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), Caitlin Collin, PhD, from Mass Eye and Ear (MEE), presented a promising CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing approach for treating people with autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa (adRP) caused by mutations in the gene RP1. The project... Read More

Eric Pierce MD PhDJason Comander MD PhD Mass Eye and Ear is co-leading a new, revolutionary clinical trial that uses CRISPR gene editing to correct a genetic mutation that leads to a form of blindness caused by Leber congenital amaurosis, an inherited retinal disorder. Clinical trial participant Michael Kalberer is the second person in the... Read More

Janey Wiggs Ayellet Segre Janey Wiggs, MD, Ph.D., Ocular Genomics Institute Associate Director, Chief of Ophthalmology Clinical Research at Mass Eye and Ear, and the Paul Austin Chandler Professor of Ophthalmology and Vice Chair of Clinical Research at Harvard Medical School, and Ayellet Segre, genetic biostatistician, Ocular Genomics... Read More

Associate OGI Director Luk Vandenberghe and University of Pennsylvania gene therapy head James Wilson said primate safety and efficacy tests have proven promising for their single-dose candidate, targeted for room-temperature storage. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded the researchers up to $2.1 million to move the vaccine... Read More