Dr. Byrne earned a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Hamilton College and then studied as a Fulbright Fellow at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. She earned a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of California Berkeley in 2007. Dr. Byrne then worked as a Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow and a Ford Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley. Dr. Byrne started her research program at the University of Pittsburgh in 2017. She has been awarded a RPB Career Development Award, a Foundation Fighting Blindness Individual Investigator Award, and in 2023 she received the University of Pittsburgh Office of Innovation Emerging Innovator Award. Recently, Dr. Byrne was named a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Byrne is also the co-founder and CSO of Avista Therapeutics, a gene therapy biotechnology company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- Ford Foundation Fellow, University of Pennsylvania
- Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California Berkeley
- University of California Berkeley, PhD in Neuroscience
- J. William Fulbright Fellow at Karolinksa Institutet
- Hamilton College, BA in Neuroscience
Education & Training
Gene augmentation prevents retinal degeneration in a CRISPR/Cas9-based mouse model of PRPF31 retinitis pigmentosa. Xi Z, Vats A, Sahel JA, Chen Y, Byrne LC. Nat Commun. 2022 Dec 13;13(1):7695. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-35361-8.
scAAVengr, a transcriptome-based pipeline for quantitative ranking of engineered AAVs with single-cell resolution. Öztürk BE, Johnson ME, Kleyman M, Turunç S, He J, Jabalameli S, Xi Z, Visel M, Dufour VL, Iwabe S, Pompeo Marinho LFL, Aguirre GD, Sahel JA, Schaffer DV, Pfenning AR, Flannery JG, Beltran WA, Stauffer WR, Byrne LC. Elife. 2021 Oct 19;10:e64175. doi: 10.7554/eLife.64175.
In vivo-directed evolution of a new adeno-associated virus for therapeutic outer retinal gene delivery from the vitreous. Dalkara D, Byrne LC, Klimczak RR, Visel M, Yin L, Merigan WH, Flannery JG, Schaffer DV. Sci Transl Med. 2013 Jun 12;5(189):189ra76. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3005708.
Developing New Vectors for Retinal Gene Therapy. Zin EA, Ozturk BE, Dalkara D, Byrne LC. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2023 Mar 27;13(12):a041291. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a041291. Online ahead of print.
The primary research focus of the Byrne lab is to create new approaches that directly address the most important unmet needs in the field of gene therapy. The Byrne Lab develops gene therapies for retinal disease, including a diverse group of blinding disorders that have a profound impact on the quality of life of patients. The Byrne lab is exploring gene augmentation, optogenetics, and genome editing approaches to treat inherited and age-related forms of blindness.