Claudio Punzo

Dr. Punzo received his PhD from the University of Basel Switzerland working on Drosophila eye development in the laboratory of Dr. Walter J. Gehring. Thereafter he joined the laboratory of Dr. Constance L. Cepko in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School for a post-doctoral fellowship on retinal degeneration. He is interested in retinal degeneration diseases that lead to blindness, and in particular retinal diseases that are associated with photoreceptor death such as retinitis pigmentosa, diabetic retinopathy and age related macular degeneration. The lab is currently developing various therapies for retinal diseases based on a siRNA chemistry that was identified in collaboration with the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.