Every good story needs a fitting ending, and ours took place in one of the world’s most beautiful cities: Florence, Italy. Our consortium with its six network workshops has taken us across Europe: from Groningen to Magdeburg, Amsterdam, Trondheim, Oldenburg and Paris. These last three years our 15 doctoral candidates worked on neuroprotection and regenerative medicine to preserve or restore vision, while tracking eye structure (OCT, MRI), visual function (perimetry, fMRI) and retinal blood vessels (OCT-A) as disease progression and therapy response biomarkers.
We held a Dissemination Conference, ‘Towards Regaining Vision and Functioning in Advanced Glaucoma’, in which the accomplished work was presented. This event was organized as part of the European Association for Vision and Eye Research (EVER) congress.
Tuesday 13/10/2026Although our program is very scientifically oriented, we received also training in starting a business, given by Nadine Schieder-Galfe. Some of the DCs continued with this training and wrote a business proposal. And these proposals were pitched to us, as the first item of our network meeting. After a lively discussion, both pitches were awarded a small money prize. This should entice them to work out their proposal and start a business. The day ended with a welcome dinner, where everyone, including all invited plus-ones, could meet and catch-up with each other. |
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Wednesday 14/10/2026The conference began with a welcome address from our Network Coordinator, Prof. Jansonius, and was chaired by Dr. Redmond (Cardiff University, UK). Two external expert speakers set the scene for the conference. Dr. Benedikter (Maastricht UMC+, Netherlands) began with a lecture on systemic modifiers of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) vulnerability beyond intraocular pressure. Dr. Demircan-Yalcin (Radboud UMC, Netherlands) closed the conference by demonstrating what electrophysiology can reveal about retinal organoids. |
| In between, the PIs presented their DCs’ work across scales from the cellular level to the brain. First, Prof. Michael Hoffmann traced structure and function from the eye to the brain, Prof. Jansonius showed how to quantify the ‘invisible’ in advanced glaucoma, and Prof. Cornelissen detailed progress in tracking visual pathway changes. Meanwhile, Dr. Nicol explored axon pathfinding for regeneration and Dr. ten Asbroek presented work from genetics to organoid-based cell therapy. Where as Dr. Guillonneau highlighted microglia and monocytes in retinal degeneration and Prof. Neidhardt covered gene networks and ciliary signaling in neuroprotection. Finally, Dr. Dahløi introduced a novel motion paradigm for glaucoma screening. |
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| After this long day with many interesting scientific topics, it ended with a small ‘graduation’ ceremony: each DC received a Certificate of Participation in the three-year MSCA-HORIZON EGRET-AAA Doctoral Network, signed by their supervisors, the Network Coordinator, and the Network and Training Coordinator. Each DC also received their own pair of EGRET-AAA themed socks, which is a nice addition to the city mugs they received during the several network meetings. |  |
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EVER Congress – 15-17th of OctoberFlorence did not let us go just yet. Some of the EGRET-AAA DCs and PIs moved on to EVER. Here the DCs presented their work to the wider European vision research community and our PIs presented their students’ work. DC Maryam Dinpajhouh won a prize for Best Rapid Fire Presentation! The week culminated in our special EGRET-AAA dissemination symposium on Saturday 17 October, which brought the results of three years of joint research to an international stage. |
EGRET-AAA has been so much more than just a research programme. It has been a network of people who have learnt from, challenged and supported each other across borders, disciplines and laboratories. We would like to express our sincere thanks to all the consortium members and partners, including the academic institutions, companies and patient organisations that hosted our DCs, provided training and welcomed us into their organisations.
Special thanks go to Hinke Halbertsma (jPI and network manager) and Kim Westra (co-network manager)! They made everything run smoothly behind the scenes, from travel plans and deadlines to workshops and this final conference. And we would also like to thank the heads of our network, Prof. Jansonius (Network Coordinator) and Prof. Cornelissen (Network and Training Coordinator), for their leadership and trust in us from day one!
The network may be closing, but the collaborations and research will continue!