Imran Bhutto, MD, PhD

Imran Bhutto is a research associate in the Department of Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed his doctoral studies in the Department of Ophthalmology at Nagasaki University, Japan, and previously was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Gerard Lutty, PhD, at Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins. Dr. Bhutto is an expert in vascular biology of the retina and choroid and how these vasculatures change in diseases like diabetes and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). His current research focuses on the pathogenesis of AMD and the role of inflammation in AMD. He recently demonstrated that three inhibitors of blood vessel growth were decreased in Bruch’s membrane of AMD subjects, making it susceptible to choroidal neovascularization (CNV). His studies involve aged normal and AMD eyes, as well as animal models of CNV in mouse and rat models. Dr. Bhutto’s goal is to elucidate the cause of AMD so that he might develop therapies to prevent or/and subsequently reduce the morbidity associated with AMD. Prior to receiving this BrightFocus Foundation award, Dr. Bhutto received a grant from the Wilmer Professor Pool fund enabling him to generate preliminary studies that led to the design of experiments to be completed using the BrightFocus Foundation award.