On September 12, University of Iowa held an event “Inside Iowa Medicine” that featured our Glaucoma Research Center that was co-hosted by Vice President of Medical Affairs, Jean Robillard and Dean of the College of Medicine, Debra Schwinn. The program included a full day of presentations, lab tours, and discussions that highlighted our glaucoma research efforts. Click on title to see more about the event.

As a member of the NEIGHBORHOOD research group, the glaucoma genetics lab has contributed to the studies of the biological pathways that are involved in the development of glaucoma. Read more about the report here.

This Research to Prevent Blindness award will be used to investigate the causes of glaucoma that occur in people with low intraocular pressure (normal tension glaucoma). The Fingert lab recently discovered that extra copies of the TBK1 gene (gene duplications or triplications) are one of the most common known causes of normal tension glaucoma. The RPB Physician Scientist Award will be used to support studies investigating how TBK1 gene duplications lead to glaucoma and vision loss.

Members of the Glaucoma Genetics Lab attended the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), one of the premier ophthalmology research meetings. Dr. Fingert gave a paper presentation at the Glaucoma Genetics session that was entitled “TMCO1 is associated with POAG in the Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study (OHTS)”. Graduate student Mark Christopher’s presentation entitled "Automated discovery of optic nerve head structural features from image and genetic data” won the prestigious Member in Training Outstanding Poster Award.