ESM Working Group on Retinal Microvascular Research

The European Society for Microcirculation (ESM) Working Group on Retinal Microvascular Research - REtinal-SEARCH - is the first working group of ESM, which was launched at the 3rd joint ESM-EVBO Conference in Maastricht, April 2019.

The Focus of the working group is on Retinal Vessel Research in Chronic Disease; Retinal Vessel Analysis as a Vascular Biomarker for cardiometabolic/neurovascular risk; Ophthalmological Diseases, Human RCTs & Epidemiological Studies.
The Aims are: Establishing an international network of experts in the field of retinal vessel analysis; standardization of SOPs for image analyses; generation of position papers and guidelines; joint research proposals; retinal vessel analysis academy.

Further details on RE-SEARCH:

• Target group: researchers and clinicians interested in human in-vivo microvascular research; industry partners
• Finance: No initial financial implications for ESM. Potential financial support would have to be decided on by ESM board.
• Working Group Regulations: to be determined in detail by the Executive Committee & Nucleus Members
• Executive Committee:
  Chairman (B. Houben; Maastricht)
  Chairman Elect or Co-Chair (H. Hanssen; Basel)
  Secretary (C. Schmaderer; Munich)
  Treasurer (N.N.)
  → Committee elected every 2 years during WG meeting at conference of ESM
  → Past WG chair remains committee member ex officio
• Nucleus members: A. Flammer, D. Schmidl, M. Ikram, N.N.
  → Elected for 4 years; 2 additional nucleus members to be elected (10 nucleus members)
• Meetings: at every ESM Conference (next: Aarhus 2021); additional meeting of the WG in alternating years (e.g. at the summer school: next in Krakow 2020); Skype conferences 2x/year; Initiatives / Task forces (such as writing groups for position statements)

What you need to do to become a member:

• Become a member of the ESM (often connected to a membership of the national society)
• Send an email with short CV (including publications in the field of retinal microvascular research) and your interest/contributions for the WG to B.Houben (b.houben at maastrichtuniversity.nl) and H.Hanssen (henner.hanssen at unibas.ch).
• Researchers who have already expressed their interest to join: Walthard Vilser (Germany), Gerhard Garhöfer (Austria), Akos Koller (Hungary), Lukas Streese (Switzerland), Roman Günthner (Munich), Patrick De Boever (Belgium), Hans-Peter Hammes (Germany), Rebekka Heitmar (UK), Athanase Protogerou (Greece), Tos Berendschot (Netherlands), Konstantin Kotliar (Germany), Sascha Klee (Germany), Leone Malan (South Africa), Angela Shore (UK), Tien Y Wong (Australia) …and many more.

Next Steps & Future Perspectives:

• Database with research interests and ideas for the WG
• Skype conference November 2019
• Prepare Editorial on WG launch & strategy in peer-reviewed journal
• Plan Position Statement
• Start international collaborations

REtina-SEARCH has just release their first newsletter >>