Anne Hanneken, MD

Anne Hanneken, M.D., is an Associate Professor of Translational Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, an active vitreoretinal surgeon at Scripps Memorial Hospital, and Vice-President/Secretary of Retina Consultants San Diego. Dr. Hanneken received her medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin and joined The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California after completing an ophthalmology residency at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute, a vitreoretinal fellowship with Dr. Robert Machemer at the Duke University Eye Center and a postdoctoral research fellowship with the Nobel Laureate and former President of the Salk Institute, Dr. Roger Guillemin. Her basic research interests span angiogenesis, neuroprotection, visual chemistry and ocular transplantation. While working with Roger Guillemin during her postdoctoral training, he introduced the audacious goal that we would be transplanting the human eye in her lifetime. Years later, she organized a team of basic scientists from the Salk Institute and the University of Utah and identified methods to revive the human eye after death and re-establish light signaling in the central macula. Their 2022 Nature paper titled “Revival of light signaling in the postmortem mouse and human retina” was listed in the top 99% of all scientific papers, the top 96% of all Nature papers, and the subject of a Wall Street Journal article entitled “A spark of life after death in sight research”. This research became a cornerstone of the government’s initiative known as THEA (Transplantation of the Human Eye Allograft) which was funded in October 2024 by ARPA-H, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, and modeled after DARPA. She is actively involved in the program with a consortium of 56 scientists across 26 institutions across the country.

She has been recognized by several awards, including 2024 Medical College of Wisconsin Alumna of the Year award, the 2023 Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute Distinguished Alumna of the Year award, the Marquette University Distinguished Alumna of the Year Award, the Arnold P Gold Foundation Humanitarian Award, the Heed Fellowship Award, the Hornaday Award and multiple San Diego and multiple Castle Connolly Regional Top Doctor of the Year awards. She is a fellow of the American Board of Ophthalmology, the American Society of Retina Specialists, a diplomat of the American Board of Ophthalmology, the Associate Editor of Ophthalmology Science, member of the American Ophthalmological Society, the Retina Society, and numerous other organizations. She has been a principal investigator or co-investigator on multiple NIH RO-1 awards and a reviewer for the National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health. She maintains a busy clinical schedule and a busy laboratory program.