Doctoral student Terzic earns Ohio Lions research fellowship

Doctoral student Miljan Terzic, PharmD. (’22), has been honored with a one-year Research Fellowship of $50,000 from the Ohio Lions Eye Research Foundation (OLERF).

OLERF, a nonprofit foundation, is dedicated to finding treatments and cures for blinding retinal diseases by supporting eye research and providing student fellowships across Ohio.

Dr. Terzic is pursuing a Ph.D. through NEOMED’s Basic and Translational Biomedicine graduate program. Under the guidance of Samuel Crish, Ph.D., Dr. Terzic’s research focuses on neurodegenerative disease states.

This fellowship provides him with full stipend support and allocates additional funds to bolster the unique spatial transcriptomic methods outlined in his proposal, titled “Manipulating Neuroinflammation to Preserve Vision in Alzheimer’s Disease.”

Spatial transcriptomics is a bleeding-edge technique that allows scientists to measure the levels of thousands of genes at different locations in an intact tissue section.

“Before this method, researchers would have to grind up tissue and measure genes in bulk, losing important information such as where the changes are occurring in the tissue, something essential for disorders such as neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Crish explained. “Now we can measure gene expression in specific parts of the structure exhibiting different levels of pathology and compare those readings to each other and neighboring, healthy tissue.”

Dr. Crish enthused, “Miljan’s achievement, especially coming so early in his time here, is a testament to his talent, knowledge and dedication. Miljan is enthusiastic, creative and has an amazing work ethic. I am thrilled he joined the Crish Lab and I look forward to seeing what’s next! We are expecting big things from Dr. Terzic.”