Hill Lecture Legacy Continues
The Hill Lecture Series endowment has established a tradition of bringing top-notch vision scientists who deliver insightful lectures to Columbus, and these visits facilitate one-on-one conversations between these luminaries and our faculty and students. This tradition continued in 2025 as the College of Optometry had the pleasure of hearing about current perspectives on glaucoma clinical care and research from Dr. Harry Quigley, the 2025 Richard and Leonora Hill lecturer.
If you polled a large group of clinicians and researchers that specialize in glaucoma about the individuals who have had the most impact on the field over the last 50 years, it would be hard to imagine Dr. Quigley not being near, if not at the very top, of the resulting list. Anyone who has regularly attended glaucoma paper sessions at the annual ARVO vision research conference likely has vivid memories of not only Dr. Quigley’s presentations on his own work but his ability to quickly absorb others’ work and distill the important implications and major outstanding questions to the audience during subsequent discussion/question periods. His knack for communicating his ideas and perspectives, both verbally and in writing, is arguably unparalleled in the field. He has used that skill to not only teach other clinicians and researchers but to provide answers on the disease to patients in the form of podcasts and a free book (see go.osu.edu/Wilmer if interested in sharing this resource with your own patients).
Dr. Quigley’s prowess in communicating pearls of wisdom relevant to current glaucoma care was on full display during his lecture on April 16, 2025. He challenged the field to continue to push for more objective criteria in definitively diagnosing a patient with glaucoma, moving away from what has often been the standard which has been a glaucoma specialist “just saying so” after looking at the patient’s optic nerve head and visual field. He discussed how this traditional approach to diagnosis has created challenges in incorporating artificial intelligence to help identify glaucoma patients based on OCT images as the gold standard. Furthermore, he outlined major challenges in patient compliance with their medical therapy (eye drops) for the disease, but he discussed progress in improving compliance through approaches such as cell phone reminders and electronic monitors on eye drop bottles.
In addition to caring for glaucoma patients in the clinic at Johns Hopkins and in leading pivotal human-based clinical studies, Dr. Quigley maintains an active research lab that has been exploring potential neuroprotective strategies targeted to saving and even regenerating retinal ganglion cells. The goal is to one day supplement current treatment modalities that lower intraocular pressure with these novel neuroprotective treatments, and the results stoke optimism that this future is not too distant. Again, his ability to outline the major issues that need to be surmounted, while presenting the rationale for approaches that could yield successful novel glaucoma therapies, was impressive and inspiring.
Many thanks to the Hills for initiating this lecture series, which enabled Dr. Quigley’s visit and resulted in an illuminating lecture and discussion on the current and future state of glaucoma care.
