Dr. Juan Gallo, Researcher at CONICET and director of the Institute for Translational Medicine Research (Universidad Austral-Conicet), became the first Latin American ophthalmologist to receive the award ARVO Gold Fellow (Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology).
“Receiving this distinction is a great honor. It is the culmination of many years of work and a long period of training young people,” the researcher stated. Dr. Gallo, who is also a physician in the Ophthalmology Department at Austral University Hospital , was recognized by the world’s largest and most respected vision and ophthalmology research organization. Founded in 1928 in Washington, D.C., it now has nearly 10.000 researchers in more than 75 countries. The award is given in recognition of his achievements, leadership, and contributions to the Association.
Juan Gallo is an ophthalmologist and holds a doctorate in Medicine. Throughout his career, he has always strived to develop a professional profile as a clinical research physician: “The years I worked at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, where I earned my doctorate, left a lasting mark on me,” he affirmed.
During his time in Sweden, he led a study on the ocular sequelae of prematurity, published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology and the British Journal of Ophthalmology. Upon returning to Argentina, he dedicated himself to the development of corneal stem cell transplantation, the results of which were also published in scientific journals in the United States.
Subsequently, his research focused on the damage that diabetes can cause to the retina. This chronic disease, whose incidence has increased considerably in recent years, has diabetic retinopathy as its main ocular complication and is the leading cause of vision loss in working-age individuals. “In recent decades, significant progress has been made, reducing the disability this disease caused 40 years ago and preventing blindness,” the researcher explained.
Dr. Gallo was also one of the founders of the Medicine program at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences of the Universidad Austral. For some years now he has directed the Institute of Translational Medicine Research where new knowledge is generated on topics of impact for public health with the purpose of shortening the distance between basic and clinical research.
“Sometimes we plan a career path, but opportunities arise along the way that we never imagined,” the researcher stated and added: “In my case, the possibility arose of obtaining a doctorate at the Karolinska Institute, the institution that awards the Nobel Prizes in Medicine and Physiology; the opportunity to begin my medical career at the Universidad AustralThe challenge is to maintain ophthalmology by combining it with research and to train young ophthalmologists who could also have a good research background, without abandoning clinical and surgical ophthalmology.”
