Ois Podcast

William “Bill” Freeman, MD, has been at the forefront of intraocular drug delivery for more than 30 years, and he’s done so while also treating patients and teaching the next generation of eye surgeons. From sunny University of California San Diego, where he serves as distinguished professor, vice chair of ophthalmology, and director of the Jacobs Retina Center, Dr. Freeman pioneered new techniques and technologies now common in the field. In the early 1990s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, he developed a surgical technique to repair detached retinas, a common complication of the cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis he was seeing in so many HIV/AIDS patients. He also found that he could repeatedly inject drugs into the eye with little-to-no systemic side effects. Dr. Freeman’s research not only pioneered a new way to treat CMV retinitis; it also led to a method of ocular drug delivery that’s now the standard of care: intravitreal injections.With the support of ongoing National Institutes of Health funding, Dr.