Board Certification: American Board of Ophthalmology, 1989- Medical Education: Medical College of Wisconsin, MD, 1984
- Internship: Rush Presbyterian-St. Lukes Medical Center, Chicago, Ill, 1985
- Residency: Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute, Ophthalmology, 1988
- Fellowship: Duke University Eye Center, Retina-Vitreous, 1990
Dr. Hanneken joined Retina Consultants San Diego on the Scripps Memorial Hospital campus in 2017. She trained at the world-class Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Hospital and spent her vitreoretinal surgical fellowship at The Duke Eye Center with the great pioneers of vitreoretinal surgery, Drs. Robert Machemer, Brooks McCuen and Gene DeJuan. She provides personally-oriented medical and surgical retina care in addition to having an active retinal research program. She specializes in translational research, which is customized clinical care that takes clinical problems from the bedside, to the research bench and brings new treatments back to the bedside. She is currently an Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, where she directs a research laboratory dedicated to developing new treatments for patients with retinal diseases.
“Patients frequently come to my office and describe clinical problems that require further study, and we set up research projects to help them. Our projects are diverse. We identified two approaches to stop the bleeding in patients with wet macular degeneration, and both evolved into clinical treatments. We identified novel natural products for the treatment of dry macular degeneration, one of which is moving forward into clinical trials. We assisted a nursing mother with diabetes select a treatment for her eye disease that would be safe for her newborn. We helped a patient recover from visual hallucinations by recognizing her heartburn medications were responsible for defective synaptic processing. In addition, we developed new clinical methods for diagnosing ocular lymphoma.”
At the present time, Dr. Hanneken’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute is using drug-discovery platforms to identify small molecules that improve vision in patients suffering from dry macular degeneration.
Academic Research & Appointments
- Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute (current)
- Associate Professor of Cell Biology at The Scripps Research Institute (2000-2002)
- Assistant Professor of Cell Biology at The Scripps Research Institute (1994-2000)
- Assistant Adjunct Professor of Ophthalmology at the Duke Eye Center (1990-2000)
- Predoctoral Research: Dr. Judah Folkman, Harvard Medical School
- Predoctoral Research: Dr. Oliver Smithies (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 2007)
- Postdoctoral Research: Dr. Roger Guillemin (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1977)
Dr. Hanneken is a Fellow of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, a Diplomat of the American Board of Ophthalmology, Elected member of the American Ophthalmological Society (AOS), the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), the American Society of Retinal Specialists (ASRS), The Retina Society, the California Medical Association and the Heed Fellow’s Society. She is the former chair of the Investigational Review Board (IRB) at The Whittier Institute for Diabetes, and a former member of the Scripps Clinic & Green Hospital General Clinical Research Center (GCRC), and the recipient of multiple RO1 grant applications from the National Eye Institute, the National Institutes of Health, The American Diabetes Association, The Juvenile Diabetes Association and the American Heart and Lung Association.
Dr. Hanneken has received two Heed Foundation/Knapp Fellowship Awards, the Hornaday Vitreoretinal Award, the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Award and the 2016 Marquette University Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award. She has filed multiple invention disclosures and a provisional patent application for the treatment of macular degeneratand has been involved with several clinical trials sponsored by the National Eye Institute at NIH.