Astra Dinculescu, PhD

Astra Dinculescu, PhD, is assistant professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Florida, College of Medicine. She completed her doctoral studies in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Florida, where she focused on proteins involved in signaling pathways within photoreceptor cells, the neurons responsible for vision. During her postdoctoral training, she studied several naturally occurring mouse models of inherited recessive retinal disorders, and successfully developed gene-based therapeutic strategies to prevent retinal degeneration and restore retinal function in these models. Her laboratory focuses on understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms leading to photoreceptor cell death in retinal degenerative disorders, including AMD, in order to develop therapeutic strategies to prevent vision loss.