Dr. Jonathan Eintracht graduated with First Class Honors from the University of Western Australia under the guidance of Dr. Sam McLenachan and Dr. Fred Chen. There, he investigated the properties of RNA delivery to stem cells in order to direct them to different cell types.

 

Dr. Eintracht later earned his PhD from the University College London (UCL) under the supervision of Professor Mariya Moosajee at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital and the Institute of Ophthalmology. He investigated developmental eye disorders arising at birth such as microphthalmia (a small, underdeveloped eye) and anophthalmia (the absence of an eye). Over the course of his PhD studies, Dr. Eintracht created stem cell-based models to study novel disease-causing genetic mutations in families affected by these disorders. He also identified new disease mechanisms that disrupt the normal development of the eye. His interest in heritable diseases also drove him to discover a use for repurposed drugs in treating rare ciliopathies, such as Bardet-Biedl and Alstrom syndrome, that cause blindness, kidney failure and other developmental anomalies.

 

Dr. Eintracht’s primary research interests in using stem cells to understand human disease have led him to the lab of Dr. Abed Mansour at the Hebrew University for his postdoctoral fellowship. Under Dr. Mansour’s guidance, Dr. Eintracht will create complex models of neurodegenerative diseases. Together with Dr. Mansour, he will use cutting-edge techniques to identify novel biological factors contributing to disease states and dissect the pathways that are disrupted which may cause diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.