News

On October 12th, IOB celebrated World Sight Day 2023 at the Novartis Pavillon in Basel with 100 guests.

That blind people could partially regain their vision was unthinkable until recently.

But this is our declared research goal at IOB.

At the annual meeting of the European Society of Retina Specialists (EURETINA) 2023, IOB's Priv.-Doz. Dr. Maximilian Pfau was honored with the prestigious 2023 Ophthalmologica Lecture last October 7^th.

The 12th edition of the Basel Stiftungstag (Basel Foundation Day) took place on August 29, 2023, at the Novartis Campus, attracting 330 participants.

IOB was honored to be part of the official program with Prof. Hendrik Scholl, IOB Director Clinical Research, giving an invited lecture on: “A novel concept for translational research."

Dr. Norbert Spirig, Director of Operations at IOB, is officially retiring today from the institute's Executive Board.

Norbert is one of the three founding directors of IOB and led operations since the institute's founding in 2017.

In recognition of their pioneering work on restoring vision to blind patients using optogenetic therapy, Botond Roska and José-Alain Sahel were today awarded the International Prize for Translational Neuroscience by the Gertrud Reemtsma Foundation, managed by the Max Planck Society.

Hendrik Scholl, Director of IOB’s Clinical Center, has been selected to receive the 2024 Kupfer Award of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). He is the first European recipient to be honored with the prestigious award. 

Martin Munz and Arjun Bharioke, from the IOB’s Central Visual Circuits group, headed by IOB Director Botond Roska, just published a paper entitled Pyramidal neurons form active, transient, multilayered circuits perturbed by autism-associated mutations at the inception of neocortex in Cell. In an interview they talk about their main findings and highlights of the study.

The annual Stephen J. Ryan Initiative for Macular Research (RIMR) Conference invites recognized researchers from diverse fields to discuss critical challenges and opportunities in age-related macular degeneration (AMD) research. This year, the meeting was held March 28-30 in Irvine, California, and the RIMR Board of Directors invited two researchers from IOB.

Stefan Spirig, researcher in our Human Retinal Circuits Group, receives the ARVO-SWISS Travel Grant for his participation in the ARVO Annual Meeting 2023 in New Orleans after handing in his abstract titled Cell type focused, high-throughput compound screen in human retinal organoids reveals targets to counteract cone photoreceptor degeneration.

In an Ophthalmology Times article, Prof. Hendrik Scholl discusses medical innovations and challenges in the field of ophthalmology, as well as the latest research findings he presented in his keynote lecture at the 14th Annual Congress on Controversies in Ophthalmology in Lisbon, Portugal.

Karolina Kaminska, researcher in the Ophthalmic Genetics Group, talks about the newly published study The first genetic landscape of inherited retinal dystrophies in Portuguese patients identifies recurrent homozygous mutations as a frequent cause of pathogenesis and the main findings of this project. 

The group supports the SECB in its advisory tasks related to the approval of clinical trials of gene therapy. 

In a guest lecture at the Singapore National Eye Centre, Prof. Scholl will discuss the possibilities of curing blindness through the use of cone optogenetics and the latest findings in ophthalmic research.

Konstantin Gugleta is a glaucoma specialist at the Ophthalmology Department of the University Eye Hospital Basel. He is responsible for the patient care and research in the field of glaucoma and answers our questions about the eye disease.

Philippe Valmaggia, leading scientist of the study “Iris color matters – a contractility analysis with dynamic volume-rendered optical coherence tomography pupillometry” explains the aim and main results of this research project.