SN - Alcon Partnership

Dr. K.Lily Therese aka "Dr. Lily" is a Reader in Microbiology at Sankara Nethralaya and a Colleague of Dr. H.N Madhavan, Director Research, Vision Research Foundation. She was offered a six month fellowship by Alcon in Fort Worth, Texas, USA.

The R&D Microbiology Department headed by Dr. Barry A.Schlech, VP, Pharmaceutical Microbiology hosted Dr. Lily from Feb through Aug 2006. This 6-month scientific fellowship program was devised by Dr. Gerald Cagle and Dr.H.N Madhavan. During this time, Dr Lily experienced the state-of-the-art, diagnostic, DNA-based methods used in Alcon Labs opthalmic anti-infective studies. Dr. Lily identified infectious agents Indian Endophthalmitis patients and detected organisms in specimens that were "culture negative ",i.e, no microbe was detectable by growth.

Her training at Alcon reinforced her interest in using denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography(Dhplc) and DNA sequencing of bacterial and fungal genomes. With these techniques, microbiologists can detect microbes in cases of endophthalmitis and identify these organisms to the species and strain-level even though the microbial culprits do not grow on traditional microbiological groups. She worked with Dr. Stroman's Anti-Infective Research Department. Dr.Lily also attended technical seminars and management meeting in R&D that gave her an insight into our projects and activities and interaction with other Alcon divisions. She also gave several seminars on her work in india with Dr. Madhavan.