Apte to receive Macula Society’s Young Investigator Award

Rajendra S. Apte, MD, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology and visual science and of developmental biology, will receive the 2013 Young Investigator Award from the Macula Society. Founded in 1977, the society is a forum for new research in retinal vascular and macular diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss in older adults.

Apte

Apte received his undergraduate and medical training at the University of Bombay, India, completing his medical degree in 1992. He then studied immunology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, earning a PhD in 1997.

At Washington University since 2003, he has devoted his research to the study of inflammation and the growth of damaging blood vessels that mark blinding eye diseases. Apte’s studies have demonstrated that a key part of the immune system regulates the development and proliferation of those damaging blood vessels. He also is involved in clinical research into diabetic retinopathy and AMD, and is director of education for the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences.

He will receive the Young Investigator Award at the end of February, at the 36th Annual Macula Society Meeting in Dana Point, Calif.