Jian-xing Ma

Biography

Dr. Jian-xing Ma graduated with a degree in medicine from China’s Jiangxi Medical College in 1984. He then moved to the prestigious Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, where he completed an MS in Pharmacology in 1987. Dr. Ma was invited to become a visiting scholar at the California-based City of Hope Beckman Research Institute (CHBRI) in 1987. In 1989, he began graduate studies at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, where he received his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1993. Dr. Ma. joined the faculty at Charleston’s Storm Eye Institute in 1994, where he was quickly promoted to the rank of tenured Associate Professor. He moved to the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC) in 2003 to accept the Laureate Endowed Chair of Research in the Department of Medicine, Section of Diabetes and Endocrinology, with an adjunct appointment in the Department of Cell Biology. In 2005 he became Director of Research for the Section of Endocrinology, just as Charlesson was incorporated to develop therapeutics based on his groundbreaking research. Dr. Ma has received several research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB) and the American Diabetes Association (ADA).  Dr. Ma was the first to report that angiogenic inhibitors are important for diabetic retinopathy and have therapeutic potential for ocular neovascular disorders. Recently, he expanded his research into diabetic nephropathy. He has published a total of 78 peer-reviewed articles in first rated scientific journals including Nature Genetics, PNAS, JBC and Diabetes, and he has made a number of invited scientific presentations at prestigious national and international conferences. Dr. Ma also serves as a reviewer for many prestigious scientific journals. He is a member of grant reviewing panels in American Diabetes Association and NIH.

Research Interest

His major research interest is in diabetic retinopathy, focusing on pathological angiogenesis, inflammation and vascular leakage in diabetes and development of new therapies to prevent vision loss from diabetes