Leah Byrne PhD

The Byrne Lab develops gene therapies for retinal disease.  Inherited retinal dystrophies include a diverse group of blinding disorders that have a profound impact on the quality of life of patients. There are currently no effective treatments for most forms of inherited retinal degeneration. However, gene therapy, in which a healthy copy of a mutated gene or a therapeutic protein is delivered to cells in the retina, is a highly promising approach to treating retinal disease. The Byrne lab uses bioengineering approaches, and high throughput, computationally guided methods, to create new gene therapies for retinal disease, including gene augmentation, genome editing and optogenetic strategies.