The Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB) is seeking a highly motivated Intern to take part of a medical device development in the context of gene therapy within the Ophthalmic Translational Research Group.

IOB is a research institute combining basic and clinical research. Its mission is to drive innovations in understanding vision and its diseases and develop new therapies for vision loss. It is a place where your expertise will be valued, your abilities challenged, and your knowledge expanded.

The Ophthalmic Translational Research Group is primarily interested in gene therapy with focus on vision loss. The eye as a model system provides a unique opportunity to study, develop and translate novel classes of therapies (such as optogenetics, pre-cision genome editing or RNA therapy). Due to its small size and relative immunprivi-leged environment, a new concept can rapidly reach the stage of a first-in-human (FIH) clinical trial. IOB currently has two main preclinical programs based on gene therapy (cone-based optogenetic vision restoration and base editing for Stargardt dis-ease).

In this project, we aim to develop a novel surgical device that would allow to deliver gene-based medicines into specialized compartments of the eye. The device has a clear translational pathway as it will be used in IOB’s gene therapy programs. The de-vice is co-developed by IOB’s researchers and a Swiss engineering company.