About Us » FFB Funded Researchers
Douglas Vollrath, M.D., Ph.D.
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Dr. Douglas Vollrath, Associate Professor of Genetics and, by courtesy, Ophthalmology, at Stanford University School of Medicine is a member of The Foundation Fighting Blindness-supported Kearn Family Center for the Study of Retinal Degeneration. Dr. Vollrath’s research interests focus on understanding mechanisms that underlie neurodegenerative forms of blindness. He uses genetic approaches to identify genes responsible for neurodegenerative blindness in humans, and carries out subsequent studies in animal models and cultured cells to test hypotheses about disease mechanisms. Dr. Vollrath has a particular interest in the role of a specific type of retinal cell, the retinal pigment epithelium, in diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, and Sorsby fundus dystrophy. Dr. Vollrath applied his knowledge of genetic and genomic methods to identify the gene responsible for retinal degeneration in the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) rat strain, a widely used animal model that has played a central role in testing potential therapies such as neuroprotection, cell transplantation, and gene therapy. Dr. Vollrath received a B.S. in Biochemistry with Honors from the University of Wisconsin at Madison where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and awarded the Dean’s Prize at graduation. He earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University as part of the Stanford Medical Scientist Training Program. Dr. Vollrath was awarded a Life Sciences Research Foundation Fellowship to carry out postdoctoral studies in human genetics at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, an affiliate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a member of the faculty of the Genetics Department at Stanford University School of Medicine since 1993. He was a Basil O’Connor Scholar of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, a recipient of the Basic Vision Research Project Award of the Karl Kirchgessner Foundation, and an ad hoc member of the National Eye Institute’s Board of Scientific Counselors. Dr. Vollrath has been an invited speaker at national and international scientific conferences and a number of distinguished lecture series. His research has been supported by The Foundation Fighting Blindness since 2001. |
