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Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 24, 2008) – Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati is a recipient of the
prestigous 2008 Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award. The award provides
$1.5 million in research funding over a five-year period beginning Jan. 1, 2009.
Ambati is one of only six physician-scientists in the nation to receive the 2008
award, which is given every other year. He is the first ophthalmologist to receive this
honor from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the only UK faculty member to
ever receive the distinction. Ambati is professor of physiology and professor and vicechairman in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of
Kentucky College of Medicine.
“I cannot think of anyone more deserving of this prestigious honor than Dr.
Ambati,” said UK President Lee T. Todd, Jr. “For years, Dr. Ambati has distinguished
himself as one of the finest ophthalmology researchers in the world, and we are awfully
proud that he is a member of the UK family.”
The Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award recognizes outstanding
mid-career physician-scientists who are applying the latest scientific advances to the
prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure of disease, and enables them to support and
mentor the next generation of physician-scientists conducting clinical research.
The Medical Research Program at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
supports physician-scientists who are recognized leaders in their fields and who have
well-established translational research programs.
An Equal Opportunity University
"We are truly proud of Dr. Ambati's work," said Dr. Jay Perman, dean of the UK
College of Medicine and vice president for clinical affairs. "He continues to be one of our
outstanding researchers, acquiring many prestigious awards for UK. But more
importantly, he is making discoveries that will one day change the lives of more than 10
million people who suffer from macular degeneration."
Ambati’s research group, whom he singularly credits for his success, is
internationally recognized for seminal contributions such as the first mouse model of
age-related macular degeneration (AMD), reported in Nature Medicine, and the
discovery of complement activation as a trigger of “wet” AMD, published in Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences. His laboratory’s most recent research, published
in the journal Nature, challenges some long held beliefs about the application of RNA
interference, or gene silencing, based on a discovery that won a Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine in 2006. Their critical discovery that small interfering RNA can
generically activate an immune receptor known as TLR3 without triggering RNA
interference gained widespread attention in the pages of Nature Medicine, Nature
Biotechnology, The New York Times, and La Recherche for its dramatic implications.
Ambati’s group recently reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that TLR3
activation can trigger the advanced “dry” form of AMD known as geographic atrophy. In
2009 they plan to start clinical trials of a new drug developed by their laboratory for this
disease, which at present has no approved treatment.
Ambati holds the Dr. E. Vernon Smith & Eloise C. Smith Endowed Chair in
Macular Degeneration Research. He was the first ophthalmologist to win the Burroughs
Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research and only the third
ophthalmologist ever to be elected to The American Society for Clinical Investigation.
He has also won awards from the Association of University Professors of
Ophthalmology, Research to Prevent Blindness, The Foundation Fighting Blindness,
The American Geriatrics Society and the New England Ophthalmological Society.
Ambati also serves on the editorial board of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual
Science and is listed on the Best Doctors in America list. His research is supported by
the National Eye Institute of the NIH and by Research to Prevent Blindness.
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