Newswise — Rockville, Md.—The ARVO Foundation congratulates Jacque Duncan, MD, FARVO — 2025 recipient of the Oberdorfer Award in Low Vision. She will present a lecture on the topic at the 2025 ARVO Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, and will receive an honorarium in recognition of this achievement.
Duncan is chair and distinguished professor at the Department of Ophthalmology, University of California. She has expertise in the diagnosis and management of patients with retinal degenerations including age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, cone-rod dystrophy and Stargardt disease. She also has a strong interest in developing imaging and monitoring technologies to better evaluate the progress of disease and the efficacy of emerging therapies.
Duncan serves as chair of the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB) Scientific Advisory Board and co-chairs the FFB Clinical Consortium Executive Committee. She worked with FFB Leadership to launch the Consortium, which has over 48 clinical centers and more than 160 investigators with expertise in the care and study of patients with inherited retinal degenerations.
Duncan, along with vision scientists Austin Roorda, PhD, FARVO and Joe Carroll, PhD, FARVO, is using adaptive optics to study vision cells in patients with genetic changes that cause them to lose their vision. She explains that, “In collaboration with clinical experts in inherited retinal degeneration through the FFB Clinical Consortium and the principal investigators of the N-acetylcysteine (NAC) Attack Trial, Peter Campochiaro, MD, FARVO; Xiangrong Kong, PhD and Glenn Jaffe, MD, we are working to apply this high-resolution imaging approach to clinical treatment trials that may preserve vision in patients with inherited retinal degenerations.”
Supported by the Lighthouse Guild through the ARVO Foundation, the Oberdorfer Award in Low Vision Research honors Michael D. Oberdorfer, PhD, who served for many years at the National Eye Institute (NEI) as director of Strabismus, Amblyopia and Visual Processing and director of Low Vision and Blindness Rehabilitation for the NEI Extramural Research Program. His support of low vision research led to an expansion of funded grants in that field.
"I have spent my professional career evaluating and caring for patients with vision loss from genetic changes they inherited but which cause their photoreceptors not to work properly, and eventually to degenerate," says Duncan. "It is incredibly meaningful to receive an award acknowledging the importance of research in conditions that cause low vision, because these diseases remain the most challenging problems in vision research and represent unmet needs for ophthalmology. The award brings recognition to our work and allows us to continue innovating novel approaches to imaging remaining vision cells, even in patients with low vision."
To learn more about the Oberdorfer Award in Low Vision Research, visit ARVO’s website
# # #
The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) is an international eye and vision research organization with more than 11,000 members worldwide from over 75 countries. ARVO advances research worldwide into understanding the visual system and preventing, treating and curing its disorders. Learn more at ARVO.org.
Established in 2001, the ARVO Foundation for Eye Research raises funds through partnerships, grants and sponsorships to support ARVO’s world-class education and career development resources for eye and vision researchers of all stages of career and education. Learn more at ARVOFoundation.org.
Media contact:
Jenniffer Scherhaufer
1.240.221.2923
[email protected]
RSS