Symposia
(all times shown are CT)
Sunday, April 23
8 - 10am
Functional retinal imaging: Optoretinography (ORG) and beyond (MOI)
Contributing section (s): MOI
Organizer(s): Michael Pircher and Robert J. Zawadzki
Speaker(s): Clara Pfäffle, Ramkumar Sabesan, Ed N. Pugh, Jr., Zhuolin Liu, Juliette McGregor, Maciej D. Wojtkowski and Jennifer J. Hunter
Description:
Functional assessment of the retina in vivo is of great interest to clinical and experimental ophthalmology because it promises to provide a more sensitive diagnosis and monitoring of ocular disease. The development of corresponding imaging instrumentation offering cellular resolution is critically needed for research and validation of novel ocular treatments and therapies. In this symposium, world-renowned experts will cover the latest developments in the field of multidisciplinary ophthalmic imaging, including in vivo probing of different retinal functions in health, disease, and under treatments. Various acquisition and excitation techniques for accessing retinal function are introduced that are based on optical coherence tomography, two-photon excitation and adaptive optics.
Cell death in ocular health and disease: Mechanisms and emerging therapeutics (IM)
Contributing section (s): AP, BI, CO, EY, GEN, PH, RE, RC, VI, VN
Organizer(s): Ashok Kumar, Vishal Jhanji and Lynn Hassman
Speaker(s): Kim Newton, Francois Paquet-Durand, Deborah Ferrington, Eric Pearlman, Sarah L. Doyle and Shusheng Wang
Description:
Cell death is a fundamental biological process with key roles in development, tissue homeostasis, and immunity. Cells dying in response to injury or infection trigger immune responses to activate host defense and tissue repair mechanisms. Emerging evidence demonstrates that cell death is a central process in immune regulation and is implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory and degenerative diseases. The dysregulation of cell death has been linked to multiple eye diseases including glaucoma, AMD, retinopathy, and ocular infections. Our knowledge about the molecular machinery that controls cell death processes has expanded substantially with the discovery of distinct modes of programmed cell death (PCD): pyroptosis, necroptosis, ferroptosis, and autophagic. While signals arising during PCD are often orchestrated to modulate protective immune responses and promote tissue repair, they can also, paradoxically, lead to tissue damage and increase disease severity. This symposium will cover topics on the molecular and cellular mechanisms that mediate the different forms of cell death as well as current concepts targeting cell death processes in disease therapy.
Mechanisms behind myopia control treatments (VI)
Contributing section (s): AP, CL, CO, LE, PH, VN
Organizer(s): Fuensanta A. Vera-Diaz, and Jos J. Rozema
Speaker(s): Padmaja Sankaridurg, Frank Schaeffel, Kate Gifford, Linda Lundström, Reagan Ashby, Lisa Ostrin and Norberto Lopez-Gil
Description:
This symposium will assess the most up-to-date knowledge on the mechanisms behind clinically used myopia control treatments.
Thursday, April 27
8 - 10am
Advanced molecular and bioinformatics methods define a new horizon for eye disease (IM)
Contributing section (s): AP, CL, CO, GEN, PH, RE, VN
Organizer(s): Lynn Hassman, Ashok Kumar and Antony St. Leger
Speaker(s): Tave van Zyl, David Mackey, Joseph Lin, Thuy Doan, Ashok Kumar, Monique van der Wijst and Dharmalingam Kuppamuthu
Description:
The past two decades have witnessed rapid progress in molecular technologies, such as the ability to rapidly and affordably sequence entire genomes or analyze the expression of tens of thousands of genes and map epigenetic landscapes at the single-cell level. With these biological advances, the need to process, store and interpret incredibly large datasets in a similarly high-throughput fashion has stimulated a parallel development of advanced informatics techniques.
This bioinformatic revolution has yielded multiple resources available to eye researchers. For example, the increasing number of healthy and disease genomes sequenced can power the discovery of pathogenic molecules and organisms. Additionally, ocular tissue gene expression atlases can be mined for comparative genetic analysis, used to optimize animal models of human disease, or to generate hypotheses about how immune cells or pathogens interact with the tissue microenvironment to mediate disease. Finally, the ability to perform integrative analysis on published datasets can vastly expand the research capacity of individual labs. This symposium will present multiple molecular and bioinformatic methods, illustrate how the integration of techniques and datasets can expedite the discovery, and foster discussion on how a team-based approach can advance eye disease research.
Aging and sex as risk factors across multiple eye diseases: Understanding the biological roles they play (LE)
Contributing section (s): BI, CL, CO, GL, RE, RC, VI
Organizer(s): Juliet A. Moncaster, and Catherine Cheng
Speaker(s): Hugh Taylor, Melinda K. Duncan, Paul L. Kaufman, Pete Williams, Christine A. Curcio, Jay M. Stewart and Cintia S. De Paiva
Description:
Aging and Sex are risk factors across multiple eye diseases, however, the underlying biological mechanisms driven by these risk factors are not well understood. This Symposium will provide our current understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying Aging and Sex as risk factors in cataracts, presbyopia, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, and dry eye disease and provide possible commonalities across these diseases. The Symposium will begin with an epidemiological overview across the multiple eye diseases and then delve into the specific diseases.
