Michael Brent

Dr. Michael Brent is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology & Vision Sciences at the University of Toronto. He has been with the retina service at Toronto Western Hospital (TWH) since 2005. His main clinical and research interests have been devoted to age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and vascular occlusive diseases. In 2014, he was awarded the Milton Harris Chair in AMD Research at the Donald K Johnson Eye Institute, TWH and University of Toronto. Dr. Brent is the director of the Clinical Trials Program at the Donald K Johnson Institute, TWH. He is a Principal Investigator for the DRCR.net, an NIHH funded diabetes clinical trials network. He is also a Principal Investigator and national lead for the CIHR funded Diabetes Action Canada research network's Retinopathy Group. Dr. Brent teaches at the medical undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate levels. He is an associate member of the institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Brent graduated with his MD in 1983 from McMaster University. He pursued an internship in Internal Medicine at the University of Toronto before entering and completing the Ophthalmology residency program in Toronto in 1987. His training continued with a Fellowship in Medical Diseases of the Retina and Vitreous at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Brent began practice in 1988 at Peel Memorial Hospital in Brampton, where he developed the Medical Retina program and served as chief of Ophthalmology from 1990-1997. In 1998, he joined the ophthalmology staff at Mount Sinai Hospital, where he became director of the Medical Retina dna Retinopathy of Prematurity programs. While there, he was awarded the Saul Wagman Endowment Fund for Research in Hereditary Macular Degenerative Diseases.

Research Synopsis

In 2014, Dr Brent was awarded the Milton Harris Chair in Adult Macular Degeneration at the Toronto Western Hospital and University of Toronto. He is director of the Ophthalmology clinical trials program at the Donald K. Johnson Eye Centre, Toronto Western Hospital, and a Principal Investigator for the prestigious NIH funded Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Network (DRCR.net). In 2016, Dr. Brent became a Principal Investigator and national lead for the Diabetes Action Canada Retinopathy Group. Diabetes Action Canada is a patient oriented diabetes research group developing solutions for management of diabetes and its complications.