Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai, 26-27 July 2025

Faculty members and research scholars from AMRF actively participated in the 31st Annual Meeting of ARVO-India 2025, held at Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai. With the theme “Advancing Interdisciplinary Vision Research,” the event was organised by Dr. Ronnie George and his team from Sankara Nethralaya.

Dr. Gowri Priya Chidambaranathan, Scientist, AMRF, delivered the keynote lecture on “Towards a stem cell-based therapy for patients with primary open-angle glaucoma.” Dr. Bharanidharan Devarajan, Scientist, AMRF, gave an invited talk on “Enhancing genomic discovery with a novel computational framework for eye disease-specific pathogenic variants.” Dr. P. Sundaresan, Senior Scientist, AMRF, served as one of the moderators for the Genetics, Molecular and Cell Biology session, while Dr. S. Senthilkumari, Scientist, AMRF, acted as a judge for both the poster and free paper sessions.

Awards

Gopika S Kumar, Project Associate, Aravind Medical Research Foundation (AMRF)
Young Investigator Award
Title: Pigmentation loss reflects EMT and functional decline in iPSC-derived RPE cells (Oral presentation)

Shivasankari, Junior Research Fellow, Department of Genetics, AMRF
Travel Fellowship

In addition, several scientists and research scholars presented papers and posters as follows:

Poster Presentations

Dhanu Prakash Muthupandi

• Distinct tear fluid macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor (MIF) and inflammatory mediator profiles in uveitis patients (Poster presentation)

Anusha Erulandi

• Altered tear fluid immuno-inflammatory profiles in patients with scleritis (Poster presentation)

Mathan L

• Proteomic analysis of plasma Small Extracellular Vesicles (SEVs) in patients with Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) in the Indian population (Poster presentation)

Dr. Daipayan Banerjee

• Plasma and vitreous extracellular vesicle-derived retinol binding protein 3 as a molecular signature of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (Poster presentation)

 Shiva Sankari Sundar

• Leber congenital amaurosis: Genetic spectrum and genotype-phenotype correlations for precise molecular diagnosis (Poster presentation)

Hari Vignesh S

• Exploring mitochondrial genetic variants in primary open angle glaucoma (Poster presentation)

Karthik Alagarsamy

• Localisation of multiple isoforms of human tear lysozyme in the extracellular vesicle (Poster presentation)

Kanthimathi R

• Spatial transcriptomic analysis of adult human retinal pigment epithelium

Lakshmi Devi Priya J

• Demonstrating the anti-fibrotic property of Relaxin-2 (RLN2) in TGF-ß2 induced fibrosis model of glaucoma using human organ cultured anterior segment (Poster presentation)

Thushmitha P

• Alteration in the YAP signaling pathway in cataractous human lens epithelium (Poster presentation)

Sneha Nair

• Unravelling MicroRNA Signatures in human trabecular meshwork stem cells: Implications with ageing and in glaucoma (Poster presentation)

Dr. Senthilkumari Srinivasan

• Regulatory role of micrornas in Wnt signaling pathways associated with steroid-induced ocular hypertension: An insight from Ex Vivo studies (Poster presentation)

Kanmani. M

• Development of an integrated RPA-EXO probe assay for low complexity and rapid detection of fungal DNA in ocular infections (Poster presentation)

Hariharan Gnanam

• Isolation and characterisation of extracellular vesicles from aspergillus flavus cultures exposed to stress (Poster presentation)

Praveenkumar R

• MiRNA profiling reveals novel mechanistic insights on the role of neurotrophin signaling in pseudomonas aeruginosa keratitis (Poster presentation)

Shreya Dinesh

• Comparative host transcriptome analysis to identify core and pathogen-specific immune response in fungal keratitis (Poster presentation)

Dr. Swagata Ghosh

• Distinct corneal gene expression profiles associate with differential disease trajectories in fusarium and aspergillus keratitis (Poster presentation)

Balaji

• CRISPR-Based RID-Myc Assay versus conventional culture in a postoperative fungal Endophthalmitis cluster: Diagnostic and therapeutic implications (Poster presentation)