December 2020 Newsletter
Dear Colleagues, Alumni, and Friends,
 
As this unprecedented year draws to a close, I am writing to wish you all happy holidays. We look ahead to next year in the hope of building future collaborations and advancements in healthcare. The best of health and a prosperous new year to your family and friends.
 
Sincerely,

J. Martin Heur, MD, PhD

Professor and Interim Chair
Charles C. Manger III, M.D. Chair in Corneal Laser Surgery
USC Department of Ophthalmology
Keck Medicine of USC
Feature Video
Take a look inside the USC Ophthalmology Residency Program and meet our current directors and residents in this brand new video created by USC Roski Eye Institute faculty and staff.
FACULTY HIGHLIGHTS
Dr. Andrew Moshfeghi was appointed as Medical Director of the USC Roski Eye Institute effective December 1, 2020.
Dr. Gianluca Lazzi was elected as the 2021 President-Elect of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (APS). In this role, he will serve as IEEE APS President-Elect in 2021 and President in 2022. The IEEE APS is strongly connected to the engineering of medical implants, with particular focus on antennas for implants, biological effects of electromagnetic radiation, and safety of electromagnetic fields.  

Awards and Grants
Aaron Nagiel, MD, PhD, received a Research to Prevent Blindless (RPB) Career Development Award.
Project Title: Role of Non-Canonical Wnt Signaling in the Developing Human Photoreceptor-bipolar Cell Synapse
Start Date: December 1, 2020

Narsing Rao, MD received the 2020 International Gold Award by the Chinese Ophthalmological Society.
Award Date: November 20, 2020

Mahnaz Shahidi, PhD, received an NIH/NEI R21 Subaward from Stanford University.
Project Title: Retinal Vessel Features as a Marker of Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension Treatment Response: A Secondary Analysis of the Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension Treatment Trial
Start Date: December 1, 2020

In the News
AARP The Magazine featured Anna Kuehl, a Keck Medicine of USC patient who participated in a study led by Mark Humayun, MD, PhD, that utilized a stem cell-based retinal implant for dry age-related macular degeneration. Ms. Kuehl's story occurs on the last page of the Medical Breakthroughs 2020 feature.


Faculty Publications
Since December 1, 2020 our faculty have published 27 papers. Eligible publications included those that were e-published in December:

Faculty Publications:

  1. Isaac Asante, PhD; and Mark Humayun, MD, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Cyanine nanocage activated by near-ir light for the targeted delivery of cyclosporine a to traumatic brain injury sites” in Molecular Pharmaceutics.
  2. Melinda Chang, MD, and Mark Borchert, MD, co-authored the paper, “Methods of visual assessment in children with cortical visual impairment,” in Current Opinion in Neurology.
  3. Mark Humayun, MD, PhD, and Gianluca Lazzi, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Targeted stimulation of retinal ganglion cells in epiretinal prostheses: A multiscale computational study” in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.
  4. Mark Humayun, MD, PhD, co-authored the paper, “One-year anatomical and functional outcomes of the argus ii implantation in korean patients with late-stage retinitis pigmentosa: A prospective case series study” in Ophthalmologica.
  5. Thomas C. Lee, MD, and Aaron Nagiel, MD, PhD; co-authored the paper, “Endoscopic vitreoretinal surgery: Review of current applications and future trends” in Survey Ophthalmology.
  6. Aaron Nagiel, MD, PhD, and Thomas C. Lee, MD, co-authored the paper, “Visual and anatomic outcomes of pediatric endoscopic vitrectomy in 326 cases” in Retina.
  7. Aaron Nagiel, MD, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Traumatic retinal detachment in patients with self-injurious behavior: An international multicenter study” in Ophthalmology Retina.
  8. Grace Richter, MD, MPH; Xuejuan Jiang, PhD; and Roberta McKean-Cowdin, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Retinal nerve fiber layer thickness in healthy eyes of african, chinese, and latino americans: A population-based multiethnic study” in Ophthalmology.
  9. Biju Thomas, PhD, and Mahnaz Shahidi, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Relation of retinal oxygen measures to electrophysiology and survival indicators after permanent, incomplete ischemia in rats” in Translational Stroke Research.
  10. Paul Thompson, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Brain structural correlates of insomnia severity in 1053 individuals with major depressive disorder: Results from the enigma mdd working group” in Translational Psychiatry.
  11. Paul Thompson, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Ten years of enhancing neuro-imaging genetics through meta-analysis: An overview from the enigma genetics working group” in Human Brain Mapping.
  12. Paul Thompson, PhD, co-authored the paper, “The evolutionary history of common genetic variants influencing human cortical surface area” in Cerebral Cortex.
  13. Paul Thompson, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Altered white matter microstructure in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome: A multisite diffusion tensor imaging study” in Molecular Psychiatry.
  14. Paul Thompson, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Cortical volume abnormalities in posttraumatic stress disorder: An enigma-psychiatric genomics consortium ptsd workgroup mega-analysis” in Molecular Psychiatry.
  15. Arthur Toga, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Perivascular space imaging at ultrahigh field mr imaging” in Magnetic Resonance Imaging Clinics of North America.
  16. Arthur Toga, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Brain volumetric deficits in mapt mutation carriers: A multisite study” in Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology.
  17. Arthur Toga, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Validation of serum neurofilament light chain as a biomarker of parkinson's disease progression” in Movement Disorders.
  18. Benjamin Xu, MD, PhD; Xuejuan Jiang, PhD; Grace Richter, MD, MPH, and Roberta McKean-Cowdin, PhD, co-authored the paper, “. Ocular biometric determinants of anterior chamber angle width in chinese americans: The chinese american eye study” in the American Journal of Ophthalmology.
  19. Sandy Zhang-Nunes, MD, co-authored the paper, “Prospective in vivo evaluation of three different hyaluronic acid gels to varying doses of hyaluronidase with long-term follow-up” in the Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery.

Affiliate Faculty Publications:

  1. Young-Kwon Hong, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Lymphatic proliferation ameliorates pulmonary fibrosis after lung injury” in the American Journal of Pathology.
  2. Young-Kwon Hong, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Ras pathways on prox1 and lymphangiogenesis: Insights for therapeutics” in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine.
  3. Roberta McKean-Cowdin, PhD, co-authored the paper, “The role of smoke from cooking indoors over an open flame and parental smoking on the risk of cleft lip and palate: A case- control study in 7 low-resource countries” in Journal of Global Health.
  4. Roberta McKean-Cowdin, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Outdoor artificial light at night and risk of non-hodgkin lymphoma among women in the california teachers study cohort” in Cancer Epidemiology.
  5. Yonggang Shi, PhD, co-authored the paper, “3d retinal vessel density mapping with oct-angiography” in IEEE Journal of Biomedical Health Informatics.
  6. Yonggang Shi, PhD, co-authored the paper, “A probabilistic atlas of locus coeruleus pathways to transentorhinal cortex for connectome imaging in alzheimer's disease” in NeuroImage.
  7. Dany JJ Wang, PhD, co-authored the paper, “High-resolution neurovascular imaging at 7t: Arterial spin labeling perfusion, 4-dimensional mr angiography, and black blood mr imaging” in Magnetic Resonance Imaging Clinics of North America. 
  8. Dany JJ Wang, PhD, co-authored the paper, “Low dose ct perfusion with k-space weighted image average (kwia)” in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.