Manju Subramanian, MD

JAD profile

Associate Editor

Term Expiration: 

12/31/2025

Affiliation(s): 

Boston University School of Medicine; Boston Medical Center

Areas of Interest: 

Ophthalmology, retina, OCT imaging, Alzheimer's disease biomarkers

Biography & Research: 

As an academic clinician, I have been excited about research throughout most of my career. During medical school, I spent a few months working in Dr. M. Marsel Mesulam’s lab at Northeastern University in Chicago, where we looked at the primate basal forebrain as it related to Alzheimer’s Disease. Since completion of my clinical training, most of my contributions to science have been clinical in nature. I was principal investigator for a comparative effectiveness study at the VA Boston Healthcare System, a double masked, randomized clinical trial comparing intravitreal bevacizumab to intravitreal ranibizumab for exudative age related macular degeneration (AMD). Both medications were known to be effective for the treatment of wet AMD, however, one drug was given off-label while the other had an on-label indication, with a large price differential. My trial was the first study comparing intravitreal bevacizumab to ranibizumab head to head in a prospective, double masked fashion, and it sponsored by the VA Boston Healthcare System. The NIH subsequently ran a similar, multicenter clinical trial and found results similar to mine. I have more recently completed a study looking at levels of protein biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease in the eye in a non-AD cohort of patients with eye disease, and those protein levels were significantly correlated to cognitive levels based on mini-mental status examination (MMSE) scores.