Vivek Gupta

Vivek Gupta is Assoc. Professor, NHMRC Dementia Leadership Fellow and has been an NHMRC career development fellowship awardee. He is "Vision Neurodegeneration" group leader, and neurobiologist with a research focus on identifying the mechanisms underlying retinal neurodegeneration in various disease conditions.

He has research background in the field of cell and molecular biology, cloning and generation of transgenic mice models, biochemistry, yeast and mammalian genomics and visual electrophysiology. He has extensively used retina as a model to investigate mechanisms underlying retinal disorders such as glaucoma and macular degeneration and brain neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. He is also studying the retinal and optic nerve changes and its correlation with brain imaging and neuropsych parameters in healthy ageing and Alzheimer’s subjects.

More recently, he has carried out targeted gene therapy studies in retina to modulate neurotrophin signalling and protect the retinal neurons in glaucoma. Dr. Gupta has previously undergone extensive postdoctoral training at University of Geneva, Switzerland and Dean McGee Eye Institute, USA. He has secured competitive grants and published more than 100 articles. He recently identified pathological accumulation of amyloid beta protein in the retina in Alzheimer’s disease and glaucoma animal models and in human post-mortem tissues.