Four facts about Professor Michel Michaelides

Professor Michel Michaelides is a professor at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, a Consultant Ophthalmologist at Clinica London and Moorfields Eye Hospital in the departments of medical retina, inherited eye disease and paediatric ophthalmology. Here are four facts about Professor Michel Michaelides.

1. He’s internationally recognised

He is a recipient of the career developmental award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness USA, which the organisation rarely gives to non-US applicants and he has gained membership of the highly prestigious Macular Society and Retina Society in the USA.

2. He undertakes medical retina and genetics clinical research.

He did his medical retina and genetics clinical fellowship at Moorfields Eye Hospital and then went to the Casey Eye Institute at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon to do a combined ophthalmic genetics and paediatric ophthalmology clinical research fellowship. He works clinically and research-wise on inherited retinal diseases in children and adults in diabetic eye disease, age related macular degeneration and is the principal investigator in at least four ongoing clinical trials.

3. Professor Michaelides’s research concerns retina, retinal diseases, retinal degeneration and macular degeneration

A lot of his research involves special imaging and measurement of cone density for instance in patients with Stargardt’s disease and RPGR – associated retinopathy. He has also written many articles over 200 in peer review journals. He has written on Leber’s congenital amaurosis concerning the early onset of severe retinal dystrophy with clinical features, genetics and therapeutic intervention.

4. He has done a lot of genetic work

Most of his genetic work sounds like very obscure medical retinal inherited retinal diseases, but significantly affects young people, albeit in small numbers. There are many different inherited retinal diseases, and it is the main cause of severe loss of sight in the working age group. Other areas include peripheral fundal findings and X-linked retinoschisis, genome-wide linkage and haplotype sharing analysis in developmental macular disorders, gene mutations in many retinal degenerations, retinal imaging and carriers of ocular albinism, electrooculography in Best disease and autosomal recessive bestrophinopathy, characteristics of the gene CNGB1 in related autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa.
I cannot list all of the more than 200 articles that he has written. I cannot even understand half of the titles of the articles, but I know that the work he is doing is phenomenal and will help many patients who have inherited retinal disease; it will help them and their children in the future.