Henry J. Klassen

Henry Klassen, MD, Ph.D., is a Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of California, Irvine. He has a longstanding interest in neural plasticity and regeneration that dates to his undergraduate days at UC Berkeley and continued during his MD/Ph.D. studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Klassen’s clinical training included an internship at the Cambridge Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and a residency in ophthalmology at Yale Eye Center, followed by a combined fellowship in medical retina and retinal research at Moorfields Eye Hospital and the Institute of Ophthalmology in London. His research has shown that transplanted retinal progenitor cells improve the function of photoreceptors of the degenerating retina of RCS rats. He continues to pursue the goal of translating these findings into a cell-based therapy for patients with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and other blinding diseases. This effort has included co-founding a startup company (jCyte) and completion of phase 1/2a and phase 2b clinical trials in RP.