Students Profiles

Rene Choi
PhD (3rd year)
choir@upstate.edu

Department: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Advisor: M. Zuber, PhD

Research Interests:

My research project consists of developing cell transplantation therapies for retinal diseases that lead to blindness. The
most common retinal diseases in the western world are Retinitis Pigmentosa and Age-Related Macular Degeneration. These two diseases have the same end-results, which is the irreversible death of photoreceptors. My project entails using 7 key eye field transcription factors, which are necessary and sufficient to develop a fully functional eye in the frog species Xenopus laevis, to reprogram primitive ectoderm cells into retinal stem cells. I will then determine the ability of these reprogrammed retinal stem cells to replenish lost photoreceptors in a mature retinal environment.

Awards:

Rene Choi received two awards in the last year. He received the "Fundamental Issues in Vision" fellowship offered at Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, MA, 2008. It was funded fully by the National Eye Institute.

Rene also was awarded the Days of Molecular Medicine 2009 MD-PhD Scholarship. Rene attended the conference at Harvard Medical School in May, 2009. The Conference Title was "Human Genetics, Stem Cells and Physiology: The future of Individualized Medicine".