Ismail Zaitoun

Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences

iszaitoun@wisc.edu

Research Focus

The Zaitoun lab has focused on retinopathy of prematurity at the cellular and molecular levels, hoping to treat the root causes of this devastating disease. The lab has zeroed in on a family of proteins called Bcl-2, one of whose members—called Bim—appears to have an important role to play when the developing retinal vasculature receives too much oxygen (hyperoxia), destroying blood vessels, or too little oxygen (ischemia), which causes blood vessels to grow too profusely.