Founder

Dr. José-Alain Sahel is Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Founder of the Institut de la Vision (Sorbonne Université/Inserm/CNRS). He is a clinician-scientist conducting research on vision restoration focusing on cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying retinal degeneration, and development of treatments for currently untreatable retinal diseases. His group (alongside Botond Roska, IOB, Basel and GenSight Biologics, a start-up company he co-founded) has been conducting pioneering research into optogenetic vision restoration and documented for the first time partial visual recovery after optogenetic therapy in a blind patient. He spearheaded a novel gene therapy for Leber Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, a blinding neurodegenerative disease. He lead - alongside Daniel Palanker and Pixium Vision, a start-up company he co-founded - the clinical development of a wireless retinal prosthesis for photovoltaic vision restoration, now in clinical trials for AMD. Sahel’s team deciphered pathways of cones maintenance mediated by the endogenous protein RdCVF and developed RdCVF into a broad gene-independent neuroprotective therapy, now entering into clinical trial (with Sparing Vision, a start-up he co-founded with Thierry Léveillard).

Holding a MD from the Paris University Medical School (1980), José Sahel was a research fellow at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary-Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA and Visiting Scholar at Harvard Biological Laboratories-Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.