NEI hosted a town hall event at the 2017 Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) annual meeting to explore basic, translational, and clinical research aspects of advancing cellular therapies for retinal disease to clinical trials.
The town hall was moderated by AGI Steering Committee member Mark Blumenkranz, M.D., Stanford University, and featured four panelists with expertise in cell replacement therapies. Peter Coffey, D. Phil., University of California Santa Barbara, summarized lessons from early attempts at replacing retinal pigment epithelium. David Gamm, M.D., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison, highlighted approaches to photoreceptor cell replacement. Jeffrey Goldberg, M.D., Ph.D., Stanford University, summarized challenges of retinal ganglion cell regeneration. And Margaret Sutherland, Ph.D., a program officer at the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, provided examples of regenerative cell-replacement strategies for Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Afterward, Blumenkranz engaged the panelists and audience in a discussion.