{"id":4535,"date":"2021-11-09T15:56:28","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T21:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/?p=4535"},"modified":"2022-07-19T10:01:02","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T15:01:02","slug":"mariana-souza-da-silveira-phd-receives-second-donoso-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/mariana-souza-da-silveira-phd-receives-second-donoso-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariana Souza da Silveira, PhD Receives Second Donoso Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mariana Souza da Silveira, PhD, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in Brazil, has been selected to receive the second Larry A. Donoso, MD Award in Retinal Research after receiving the highest ranking score in the 2021 grant review process, a criterion for the Award.\u00a0 The Award was created to honor IRRF Director, Larry A. Donoso, MD, PhD, to recognize his tireless efforts for the IRRF. Dr. Silveira was awarded two-year funding for her proposed project <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Generation of Induced-Retinal Ganglion Cells by Reprogramming Late Retinal Progenitors and Adult M\u00fcller Glia.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vision loss in glaucoma results from neurodegeneration of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and their optic nerve axons, which process and carry visual information from the eye to the brain.\u00a0 RGC loss is irreversible, given that the retina of humans and other mammals lack significant regenerative capacity.\u00a0 However, RGCs effectively regenerate in the adult fish retina from M\u00fcller glia (MG).\u00a0 Dr. Silveira is exploring the question, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">could transcriptional reprogramming of MG reestablish this proliferative and neurogenic ability in the mammalian retina?\u00a0 <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The identification of reprogramming factors sufficient to override the restriction and promote <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">de novo<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> neurogenesis of RGCs <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in vivo<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is key to design novel regenerative strategies for RGC replacement in glaucoma and other conditions that kill these neurons.\u00a0 Two Aims have been identified for this project.\u00a0 Aim 1: Optimize Klf4 (Kr\u00fcppel-like factor 4) reprogramming strategies of late retinal progenitors to generate mature iRGCs.\u00a0 Aim 2: Establish whether rodent M\u00fcller glia can be reprogrammed via Klf4 to generate iRGCs <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in vivo.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Silveira will collaborate with Dr. Alejandra Bosco, University of Utah, USA, who will act as co-principal investigator and who will help direct Aim 1 for the project. \u00a0 Dr. Bosco currently works in the laboratory of Monica Vetter, PhD, Chair, Department of Neurobiology at the University of Utah School of Medicine.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Silveira\u2019s research experience is focused on retinal development.\u00a0 Recently, she started working in reprogramming as an approach for generating a specific cell type, the retinal ganglion cell (RGC).<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default\"><a href=\"https:\/\/irrf.org\/donoso-award\/\">Larry A. Donoso, MD Award in Retinal Research<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mariana Souza da Silveira, PhD, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in Brazil, has been selected to receive the second Larry A. Donoso, MD Award in Retinal Research after receiving the highest ranking score in the 2021 grant review process, a criterion for the Award.\u00a0 The Award was created to honor IRRF Director, Larry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,335,320,219],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4535"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4563,"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535\/revisions\/4563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irrf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}