Leah Byrne, PhD

Founder and Chief Scientific Officer • Avista Therapeutics

Dr. Leah Byrne is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh, with secondary appointments in the Departments of Neurobiology and Bioengineering. Leah’s work has focused on developing gene-based approaches, including viral vector-mediated gene delivery and genome editing, to interrogate the biology underlying retinal disease and treat inherited blindness. Prior to working at Pitt, Dr. Byrne attended Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, where she received a BA in Neuroscience. She was then a J. William Fulbright Fellow at Karolinksa Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. After obtaining her PhD from UC Berkeley, she held the position of Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow and a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, and the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. During this time, she engineered next-generation AAV viruses for gene therapy in the retina, developed high throughput methods for directed evolution of viral vectors, and created therapies for inherited retinal degenerations affecting photoreceptors and RPE.