Shintaro Shirahama, MD, PhD

Dr. Shintaro Shirahama, MD, PhD, is an ophthalmologist with eight years of clinical research experience and seven years of basic research experience. He has a strong background in ocular inflammatory diseases, including infectious and non-infectious uveitis. After graduating from medical school in Japan, he joined the ophthalmology department at the University of Tokyo in 2013. He continued his training as an ophthalmologist at the hospital, including the University of Tokyo Hospital, between 2013 and 2021. Dr. Shirahama has primarily been engaged in the outpatient and inpatient treatment of patients with ocular inflammatory diseases in the uveitis clinic. He started the PhD program at the University of Tokyo in 2017with the research goal in graduate school was to identify host-derived long non-coding RNA that contributed to the proliferation of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) in retinal photoreceptor cells. He identified a novel long non-coding RNA that promotes the HSV-1 DNA replication and proliferation in retinal photoreceptor cells. After receiving his PhD in 2021, he joined Dr. Bruce R. Ksander’s lab at the Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, where his research aims to restore dysfunctional RPE cells through in vivo epigenetic reprogramming. He aims to develop a novel transplant-independent therapy for RPE dysfunction in age-related macular degeneration.