Futterman Lecture brings expert on genetics of retinal diseases to campus

Dr. Thaddeus Dryja, a leading expert on the genetic mutations responsible for inherited retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, will be the speaker for this year’s Sidney Futterman Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the School of Medicine’s Department of Ophthalmology.

He will speak on “The Role of Retinoid Metabolism in Hereditary Photoreceptor Disease” from 10:30 a.m. to noon, Thursday, May 25, in room T-439 of the Health Sciences Center. The lecture is free and open to everyone.

Dryja, also widely recognized for his work on cancer-related genes, is David Glendenning Cogan Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cogan Eye Pathology Laboratory and the Ocular Molecular Genetics Institute there. He is also a physician at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

In 1991, Dryja and his colleagues demonstrated that one form of autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that causes gradual degeneration of sight and eventual blindness, was associated with mutations in the gene encoding opsin, a protein necessary for the photoreceptor cells of the retina to function.

Since then, he has gone on to characterize mutations in many other genes responsible for inherited retinal diseases, including several forms of retinitis pigmentosa and congenital nightblindness.

He earned both his bachelor’s degree and medical degree from Yale University. After an internship, he moved to Boston and Harvard, where he completed a residency in ophthalmology and fellowships in ophthalmic pathology and in clinical genetics and ophthalmology before joining the faculty.

Dryja has received several prestigious awards for his work in molecular genetics and ophthalmology, and serves on several advisory boards and editorial boards. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996.

The lectureship honors Dr. Sidney Futterman, a member of the UW Department of Ophthalmology from 1966 until his death at age 49 in 1979. His research on the metabolism of vitamin A in the retina was widely recognized and he received the Friedenwald Medal, the most prestigious honor of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the year before his death.