Affiliation: Sabanci University

Dr. Cavit Agca has received his B.S. in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Bogazici University in 2001 and his PhD from Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans in 2008.  During his PhD in developmental biology, he has worked under the supervision of Dr. William H. Klein in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, at the University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center on the Sea Urchin Genome Project (SUGP) identifying the sea urchin orthologs of mammalian retinal genes and elucidating their expression pattern in early embryos and adult tube feet.  After this project, he continued to work in Dr. Klein`s lab as a postdoc on evolutionary perspectives of vision. Afterward, he has worked under the supervision of Dr. Christian Grimm in the Department of Ophthalmology, at the University of Zurich. Dr Agca`s main focus was to identify the mechanisms related to endogenous neuroprotection in the retina. He has discovered the cis-regulation of Lif mRNA stability in Muller cells and redox signaling as the main regulator in this mechanism which was a key finding connecting redox signaling and neuroprotection in the retina. This work was awarded Ophthaward 2016 for Jury`s choice prize in Switzerland. On October 2014, he moved to Basel to work with Dr. Albert Neutzner at University Hospital Basel on a novel retinal gene therapy targeting the OPA1 gene in Autosomal Dominant Optic Atrophy (ADOA) using artificial transcription factors. At the time, Dr. Agca also initiated a study deciphering the dedifferentiation capacity of Muller cells together with Dr. Markus Tschopp. Since 2019 September, Dr. Agca has been at Sabanci University, Istanbul as a faculty member. He is now establishing a research program regarding gene therapy applications and regenerative approaches.