New Orleans, US, 23 – 27 April 2023
Prof. K. Dharmalingam, Director-Research; Scientists Dr. Gowri Priya Chidambaranathan, Dr. A. Vanniarajan, and research students P. Saranya, R. Iswarya and Saraswathi from Aravind Medical Research Foundation attended the meeting. P. Saranya received the DBT Travel Grant Award and Dr. C. Gowri Priya got partial travel grant from CSIR – HRDG to attend the meeting.
- 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 andantioxidant property: an attempt towards a cell-free therapy for glaucoma (Poster presentation)
The research students visited Structural and Cellular Biology laboratory at Tulane University, New Orleans and interacted with Dr. Muralidharan Anbalagan who is working on metastasis in cancer models and have experience in animal models, xenografting, imaging techniques and various molecular techniques. The team also visited Albert Einstein School of Medicine, New York and 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.They paid a visit Dr. Jurkunas Lab and other general lab facilities at Schepens Eye Research Institute, Boston, and observed their instrumentation facilities which includes ultracentrifuge, Mass spectrometry, Live cell imaging system, learned mice eye dissection from them and also interacted with Dr. Joseph Ciolino who is working on exosomes from various cells and cell lines.
Dr. Vanniarajan met with Dr. Lieberman at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta to discuss structural alterations of the mutant proteins especially myocilin. He had discussions with Dr. Srinivasan, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta on developing methods for microbial detection especially Streptococcus Pneumoniae. He held meeting with Dr. Vijayakumar, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta to discuss the research on non human primate models for bacterial and viral infections. At Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, he met Dr. Muralidharan and discussed mouse xenograft and bone metastatic cancer models. He also met Dr. Paul Bernstein, Moran Eye Centre, Salt Lake City to discuss nutritional intervention for retinal dystrophies. At the University of Texas Health, San Antonio, he met Suryavathi and had dicussions on patient derived explants in mice for studying cancer progression in women cancers.
