Retinal specialist
Dr. Jacque Duncan is an ophthalmologist at UCSF Medical Center who specializes in treating retina degenerations such as retinitis pigmentosa, which affects one in 3,500 people worldwide; and age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in people over age 50 in the U.S. Both conditions run in families and currently have no cure. Her expertise includes the diagnosis and treatment of retinal diseases such as Usher syndrome, cone-rod dystrophy and Stargardt disease, a form of macular degeneration that develops in childhood, and the use of experimental techniques to slow or prevent these conditions.
In her research, she is studying treatments to preserve vision and to use devices to stimulate visual perception in patients. She has received research funding from the The US Food and Drug Administration Office of Orphan Product Development, the Foundation Fighting Blindness, Research to Prevent Blindness, the Lowy Medical Research Institute, the Giannini Foundation, the L.L. Hillblom Foundation, the Beckman Institute for Macular Research, Karl Kirchgessner Foundation, Hope for Vision, and the American Geriatrics Society. Dr. Duncan earned a medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco, where she completed an internship in internal medicine as well as her ophthalmology residency. She then completed a medical retina fellowship at the Scheie Eye Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, where she focused on patients with age-related macular degeneration and inherited retinal degeneration. She returned to UCSF and joined the faculty in 2000. She is a professor of clinical ophthalmology at UCSF and currently serves as the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Foundation Fighting Blindness.