Singapore, 8-10 June

Dr. N. Venkatesh Prajna,
Chief, Cornea & Refractive Surgery Services, Aravind-Madurai
Topic: Update on fungal keratitis -Newer trends in diagnosis

New Orleans, US, 23-27 April

Prof. Dr. K. Dharmalingam
Title: Defining the host response to ocular pathogens using transcriptomics and proteomics (Paper presentation)

Dr. Gowri Priya Chidambaranathan
Title: Decline in the function of adult human retinal pigment epithelial stem cells with ageing (Paper presentation)

P. Saranya
Title: Decline in the adult human lens epithelial stem cell function with ageing and in cataract (Paper presentation)

K. Saraswathi
Title: Genomic and transcriptomic profiling identifies aberrant signalling pathways in ocular B cell lymphoma (Paper presentation)

Dr. A. Vanniarajan
Title: Distinct epigenomic alterations in retinoblastoma (Poster presentation)

R. Iswarya
Title: Human trabecular meshwork stem cells derived exosomes enhanced wound healing and antioxidant property: an attempt towards a cell-free therapy for glaucoma (Poster presentation)

During the visit to US, the research students had the opportunity to visit various renowned institutions and interact with experts in their respective fields. At Tulane University, New Orleans, they visited the Structural and Cellular Biology laboratory and interacted with Dr. Muralidharan Anbalagan, who is working on metastasis in cancer models. Dr. Anbalagan’s expertise includes working with animal models, xenografting, imaging techniques and various molecular techniques.

The team also visited Albert Einstein School of Medicine, New York, where they interacted with Dr. Satish Nandakumar, who is working on hematopoietic stem cells- CRISPR/Cas9 mediated Stem Cell Editing to study the mechanism of blood cancer predisposition. Additionally, they visited Dr. Jurkunas Lab and other general lab facilities at Schephens Eye Research Institute, Boston, where they observed instrumentation facilities such as ultracentrifuge, Mass spectrometry, Live cell imaging system, learned mice eye dissection from them and had discussion with Dr. Joseph Ciolino who is working on exosomes from various cells and cell lines.

Dr. Vanniarajan had meetings with experts during his visit. He met with Dr. Lieberman at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta to discuss structural alterations of the mutant proteins especially myocilin. He also had discussions with Dr. Srinivasan, at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta focusing on developing methods for microbial detection, especially Streptococcus Pneumoniae. Additionally, he held a meeting with Dr. Vijayakumar, at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta to discuss the research on non-human primate models for bacterial and viral infections.

At Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, Dr. Vanniarajan met Dr. Muralidharan and discussed mouse xenograft and bone metastatic cancer models. He also had meeting with Dr. Paul Bernstein at the Moran Eye Centre, Salt Lake City discussing nutritional intervention for retinal dystrophies. Furthermore, at the University of Texas Health in San Antonio, he met Suryavathi to discuss patient-derived explants in mice for studying cancer progression in women cancers.