May 30, 2015

Association for Research in Vision & Ophthalmology Meeting. Denver May 2015

View some images from the ARVO 2015 meeting in a Google+ photo storyboard. See link below. You can learn more about ARVO at their ARVO.org website.

About 10,000 "eye" scientists and clinicians (professors, PhDs, graduate students, undergraduate students, post-docs, MDs) attend this five-day meeting each year.

Traditionally for many years held in Sarasota FL, then for over ten years in Ft. Lauderdale, the meeting outgrew those centers and requires conference centers with accommodations close to the actual meeting. Seattle has been the best so far, Orlando was good, and Denver was up their with Seattle in my opinion. This month May (3-7) we met and talked and presented in Denver CO, one of the nicest pedestrian and bike friendly cities in North America. 

Vision scientists, while studying eyes, have tended to discover many things that are applied now in all areas of medicine and biology. The development of the "candidate gene approach" to guide the discovery of specific genetic mutations that cause inherited diseases, and most recently the first successful treatments of specific blinding retinal disease with gene therapy. Replacement of damaged retinal pigment epithelial cells (RPE cells) in elderly AMD patients using RPE cells made from embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs, from skin) are in their first human clinical demonstration trials in the US and Japan. 

Frankly, its fun doing eye science, even though its a little work every day to hold down a professor/scientist job. If you like to explore the unknown and think and write and read alot, and repeat experiments until they work well, then its a good place to be. International meetings like ARVO are a way to recharge and become inspired to do on yet another year, sharing information with other researchers from all over the globe. 

Much Starbuck's was drunk in the downtown Denver area in early May, to keep brains alert.

Cheers.

Ken Mitton (ARVO Fellow, Silver)

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