Duke Eye Center is proud to announce that Eleonora Lad, MD, PhD has been named Vice Chair for Clinical Research.

Sarah Eom, PhD student in the Pratt School of Engineering, will present her research on "Edge-based Augmented Reality (AR) Guidance System for Retinal Laser Therapy via Feature Matching" at the 22nd International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks held May 9-12, 2023 in San Antonio, TX. She also presented this research at the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) annual meeting in April

Daniel R. Saban, PhD is the recipient of the 2024 Cogan Award, presented by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). This prestigious award recognizes young researchers that have made significant contributions to research in ophthalmology or visual science, and that show substantial promise for future contributions in this field.   

The annual meeting for the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) will be held April 23-27 in New Orleans, LA. There will be 100 presentations by Duke faculty and trainees. Paloma Liton, PhD and Anthony Kuo, MD served on the 2023 ARVO Meeting Planning Committee. 

View a Full List of Duke Presentations

FDA Approves First Treatment for Geographic Atrophy

On February 17, 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a groundbreaking treatment to treat geographic atrophy (GA), an advanced form of dry macular degeneration (AMD). Eleonora Lad, MD, PhD, director of clinical research and associate professor, was a lead investigator in the OAKS trial, a pivotal clinical trial that supported the FDA approval.

Duke School of Medicine has received more than $527 million in federal funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) in 2022, ranking ninth nationally, according to the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research. Duke Ophthalmology is one of eight clinical science departments and two basic science departments in the School of Medicine to rank among the top 10 in the country - receiving over $10 million in NIH funding in 2022.

Duke Eye Center is participating in two pivotal gene therapy clinical trials, ATMOSPHERE and ASCENT that may become promising treatments for age-related macular degeneration.  The studies, are large multisite trials, and Duke is the lead site for ASCENT and Lejla Vajzovic, MD is the lead PI for the trial. 

Duke glaucoma specialist Henry Tseng, MD, PhD discovered an important novel function for a gene called Optineurin through a collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of virologists at the University of Illinois Chicago over many years.  This gene is associated with glaucoma, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and may play a role in other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s diseases. This exciting work was reported in two recently published papers in Nature Communications and Journal of Immunology. 

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of vision loss in the elderly in the Western World. The dry clinical sub-type of this disease occurs in approximately 85% of patients and is characterized by the accumulation of extracellular deposits in the posterior pole of the eye. The exact mechanisms involved in the growth and development of these deposits, which are similar to those that form in systemic and neurodegenerative diseases such as atherosclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease, is not known. Additionally, there are no therapies available to patients with dry AMD.

Researchers at Duke Eye Center have identified that Netarsudil™ is particularly effective at treating steroid induced glaucoma. Results of the study were published in eLife in March 2021.