The annual ARVO conference, which was held at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, US, saw ophthalmic experts from around the world participate in a series of symposia, poster presentations and deliberations. A seven-member team from Sankara Nethralaya took part at the event held from May 2- May 6.
Dr. Lingam Gopal, senior Vitreo Retinal consultant and Director, Research, Sankara Nethralaya presented a poster on identifying the novel genes in retinoblastoma using microarray.
Dr. Krishna Kumar, Head of Department, Ocular Pathology and Incharge, Stem Cell Research Group presented a poster on the beneficial effect of drugs delivered using nanocarriers to treat retinoblastoma. He also participated at a workshop on Indo-US research collaboration where he spoke at length on the research projects at Sankara Nethralaya which are an Indo-US venture. Dr. Krishna Kumar was awarded a travel fellowship by the Indian Council of Medical Research to participate at ARVO 2010.
Dr. Mahalakshmi, lecturer at the Microbiology Department, who was awarded a travel fellowship by ARVO, presented a poster which explained the evaluation of Polymerase Chain Reaction for diagnosis and genotyping of Ocular Toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasma Gondi is a parasite which causes infection; when such an infection occurs in the eye, the condition is described as Ocular Toxoplasmosis.
Dr. Ronnie George and Dr. Rajiv Raman presented the data from two major population based studies — the Chennai Glaucoma study and the Sankara Nethralaya Diabetic Retinopathy Epidemiology and Molecular Genetics study (SN-DREAMS).
Dr. Mamatha from the Department of Genetics presented the research work in inherited retinal disease.
Dr. Angayarkanni from the Biochemistry laboratory presented work on biochemical changes in Diabetic Retinopathy at ARVO.
