Vision Discovery Institute Second Annual Scientific Retreat

 

  The VDI held its second annual retreat at the Augusta Marriott Hotel in downtown Augusta on Thursday and Friday, March 18-19, 2010. The events for the retreat included a reception on Thursday evening and a day-long series of scientific presentations on Friday.  

 

  The distinguished guest and keynote speaker was Dr. Paul Sieving, M.D., Ph.D., Director, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health. His keynote address was entitled "Translational Research:Ophthalmic Genetics."  

The reception provided a forum for faculty, trainees and guests to meet and interact with Dr. Sieving and with each other informally. On display during the reception were posters presenting research activities of trainees. Throughout the reception, faculty and trainees were engaged in discussions about the research and other matters related to clinical-translational activities of the VDI.

The 8-hour long retreat began on Friday morning, March 19 with opening remarks by Julian Nussbaum, M.D., clinical co-director of the VDI, who spoke of gaining new scientific insights from collaborative efforts between basic science laboratories, clinics and hospital units, and schools such as Allied Health and Dentistry as well as the community. Special invited guests D. Douglas Miller, M.D., Dean, Medical College of Georgia and James Thompson, M.D., Interim President, Georgia Health Sciences University, spoke to the attendees noting the importance of clinical-translational initiatives on the MCG campus. Their opening remarks set a tone of enthusiasm about the exciting research enterprise on the MCG campus.

Sylvia Smith, Ph.D., basic science co-director of the VDI presented information about the current status of the VDI. The report focused on the accomplishments made since the 1st retreat held on November 14, 2008 in the Greenblatt Library (MCG Campus), the strategies to promote effective interactions among the VDI members, targeted recruitment within and beyond the MCG community, and the 2009-2010 pilot projects. Dr. Smith also spoke of the five VDI student fellowships that are the first to be awarded. In addition to the report of activities over the past 16 months, the plans for 2010 were outlined. The strategies to achieve these plans emphasized fostering effective interactions, enhancing recruitment and increasing support for vision research at MCG.

Scientific presenters were:

Kathryn Bollinger, M.D., Ph.D. - "Quantitative proteomic analysis of TGF-ß treated trabecular meshwork"

 

Zhiyong Yang, Ph.D. - "Efficient Neural Representation of Context-mediated Probability Distributions in Natural Scenes

                                  and Visual Saliency"

 

Jeffrey Mumm, Ph.D. - "Selective ablation and regeneration of a subset on ON bipolar cells"

 

Azza El-Remessy, Ph.D. - "ProNGF as a novel mediator of diabetic retinopathy"

                                 

Manuela Bartoli, Ph.D. - "Biomarkers of diabetic retinopathy"

 

Vadivel Ganapathy, Ph.D. - "Characteristics of RPE cells from hemochromatosis mice"

 

Steve Brooks, M.D. - "Hyperoxia as therapy for ischemic retinopathy"

 

Pamela Martin, Ph.D. - "Expression and function of GPR109A in RPE and its relevance to diabetic retinopathy"

 

                  

Dr. Smith speaks with students                                      Poster presentation

Poster presentations were made by:

Ming Zhang, Ding Xie, S. Priya Narayanan, Modesto Rojas, Mohammed Al-Gayyar, Mohammed Abdelsaid, Hua Liu, Xiaofu He, Chintan Patel, Jutamas Suwanpradid, Harumasa Yokoto, Ahmed Ibrahim, Folami Lamoke, AnnaMaria Maraschi, Renee Bozard, Jinhua Xu, Wenbo Zhang, Yonju Ha, Preethi Ganapapthy, Haroldo Flores Toque, Jinling Yang, Deeksha Gambhir, Steven Walker and Junko Ariga.

Our special thanks to the following for making the retreat possible:

• Medical College of Georgia - Dean Miller and Joel Covar, Director of SOM Operations
• College of Graduate Studies - Dean Gretchen Caughman

We would also like to recognize the following for their contributions to the retreat:

Our Moderators:

• Emory Patterson, M.D. - Senior Ophthalmology Resident
• Heather Cathcart, Ph.D. - Recent Graduate of Cellular Biology and Anatomy
• Mohammed Al-Gayyar, Ph.D. - Post Doctoral Fellow
• Folami Lamoke - Graduate Student