Maria Moreira Patricio

Research Summary

Maria's research background is mainly on retinal cellular and molecular biology, specifically the cellular physiology and molecular processes involved in normal retinal function, and how these are disordered in retinal disease. During her PhD she studied how Rab GTPases’ dysfunction may contribute for altered secreted levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and be involved in the pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Her work in Professor MacLaren’s research group involves the development of existing gene therapy protocols used by international centres for ongoing choroideremia gene therapy clinical trials. The first published data (MacLaren et al, 2014) showed very promising initial results on using adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based gene therapy for treatment of choroideremia.

Maria is also working on the development and testing of new AAV vectors for the transfection of retinal cells. The goal of this project is to develop novel therapies for retinal disease using animal models and laboratory research that can be later used in human clinical trials.