Research

The main areas of research of Professor Alio are related to his academic activity. He started with clinical immunology and inflammation and neovascularization, creating the International Ocular Inflammation Society and the Journal of Ocular Immunology and Inflammation jointly with Dr BenEzra, Hadassah University, Israel. Later on, he moved to Alicante, where he changed his research activities to anterior segment due to the local available resources and the demand for research. Anterior segment became his focus and he started academic research in refractive surgery, when this was almost without any scientific support, this research was initially created jointly with George Waring Ill who was at that moment the mentor of Professor Jorge Alio. Following this trend, he entered into modern cataract and refractive surgery, starting phacoemulsification, the first intraocular lenses in Spain in the late 80’s and related to this he developed a large number of clinical studies partially sponsored by the industry, independent from academic resources, making the initial studies of most of the intraocular lenses, monofocal, multifocal, toric and others, including telescopic lenses for macular degeneration, which led to the initial development of most of these technologies.
During his career he has been the director of a high number (76) of PhD doctorates and international fellows (54) have been under his direct supervision. He has mostly developed his academic activities in Spain, where he developed the first continuous medical education in ophthalmology in Spain in 1999. Along his academics career has been the author or coauthor of 710 (WoS) scientific publications in peer review journals, contributing to an important number of journals as member of the editorial board or section editor, becoming even editor in chief of one of the first open access journals. This contribution to the scientific literature has been continuous since the beginning of Professor Jorge L. Alio’s career and I especially know this activity because of my position as Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Ophthalmology to which he is section editor. He has participated in the foundation of several journals such as Clinical Immunology and Inflammation, Journal of Ocular Inflammation and Infection, Asia Pacific Journal of Ophthalmology, Eye and Vision, among others.
Recently, I have to acknowledge that Professor Jorge L. Alio has developed for the first time worldwide, the first clinical study on corneal regeneration, a topic in which I am participating with my institution in a multicentrical study. The list of publications of Professor Jorge L. Alio on this topic goes back for over 14 years, from basic laboratory sciences, preclinical studies (3-9) and finally, the first international clinical study on corneal stromal regeneration performed in the human being. At this moment, the multicentrical study is confirming the results already published by Professor Jorge L. Alio on a grant that has been obtained from the Spanish Research and Development Ministry of Science.