Honolulu in the 50th state of the United States of America, Hawai’i, hosted the 2018 Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) conference from 29 April to 3 May this year. About 11,000 delegates attended this always popular annual event, one of the most important meetings in any ophthalmology, optometry or vision science researcher’s calendar.
The location was a stark difference from last year’s Baltimore gathering (especially in terms of weather - enough said!). Perhaps due to this or perhaps to the ease of the now direct flights between New Zealand and Honolulu, a large contingent from the University of Auckland’s Department of Ophthalmology and School of Optometry and Vision Science attended, including Professor Dipika Patel, Associate Professors Jennifer Craig and Sam Schwarzkopf and Drs Ilva Rupenthal, Joanna Black, Jie Zhang, James Slater and Andrew Collins.
The conference theme, ‘Stand strong for science: Stand for strong vision science’, had an undertone of politics to it, suggesting this was not just an ordinary ARVO meeting. Besides the normal symposia, mini-symposia, workshops, special interest group meetings and poster presentations, there were several ‘pre-meetings’ which ran before and alongside the main conference. One of them was the joint KMOS-LIME (Korean Meibomian Ocular Surface-Lid and Meibomian Gland Working Group) meeting. A/Prof Jennifer Craig was the keynote speaker at this session, sharing the University’s research into the predisposition of the Asian eye to meibomian gland dysfunction, an apt topic for an Asian mini-conference!
Apart from the current buzzwords at many of this year’s conferences - ‘deep learning’ and ‘artificial intelligence’ - gene editing and repair dominated this year’s ARVO meeting. Within this theme, Professor Jennifer Doudna from UC Berkeley delivered the keynote speech on ‘CRISPR-Cas Gene Editing: Biology, Technology and Ethics’. She discussed how this revolutionary piece of technology could assist researchers and clinicians in treating HIV, sickle cell disease and muscular dystrophy.
Another keynote speaker was Professor Shoukhrat Mitalipov, director of the Centre for Embryogenic Cell and Gene Therapy of Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Prof Mitalipov gave a rather fascinating presentation on IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) and novel germline gene repair in early pre-implantation embryos.
