Martin Friedlander, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Friedlander received his undergraduate education at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine where he graduated with Highest Honors in Biology. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in the Committee on Developmental Biology and his M.D. at the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center. He journeyed to the west coast for his clinical training in ophthalmology, completing a residency and retina fellowship at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been on the faculties of the Rockefeller University (where he worked with Professor Gunter Blobel, the 1999 Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine) and the University of California, Los Angeles prior to joining the staff of the Scripps Research Institute and Scripps Memorial Hospital in 1993. He is presently a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and the Graduate Program in Macromolecular and Cellular Structure and Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute. He is a Staff Ophthalmologist and Chief of the Retina Service at Scripps Clinic and Green Hospital as well as a Staff Ophthalmologist at Scripps Memorial Hospital. Dr. Friedlander has been a scholar of the Sinsheimer Foundation and the Heed Ophthalmic Foundation and his research is supported by the National Institutes of Health (National Eye Institute) and The Robert Mealey Program for the Study of Macular Degenerations. His research interests focus on understanding basic underlying mechanisms of ocular angiogenesis and identifying therapeutic approaches to treating ocular neovascular diseases such as macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. He has also had a long-standing interest in targeting, translocation and integration of polytopic membrane proteins including rhodopsin and sodium-calcium exchangers. The two research programs are integrated by their application to the treatment of neovascular eye disease and inherited retinal degenerations.