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The National Eye Institute (NEI) has awarded a $3 million Core
Grant to the Visual Sciences Research Center at the CWRU School
of Medicine and the Research Institute of University Hospitals
of Cleveland (UHRI) in support of current and new studies on major
diseases of the eye and visual system.
The NEI Core Grant, a renewal of a $2 million
NEI award in 1997, is expected to spark discoveries at both clinical
and basic levels of scientific inquiry at the CWRU School of Medicine
and UHRI.
The five-year grant takes effect immediately.
It is the only such award to an academic medical center in Ohio.
With this award, the center will be receiving
nearly $6 million in funding from NEI this year to support developing
cures to prevent and treat blinding eye diseases such as amblyopia,
cataract, corneal scarring, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma.
The NEI, one of the National Institutes of Health, conducts and
supports research that helps prevent and treat eye diseases and
other disorders of vision.
"The initial core grant established vision
research here at UHRI and Case Western Reserve University School
of Medicine as a national priority," said Jonathan Lass, the Charles
I Thomas Professor and chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology
at UHC and CWRU. "This most recent grant award is a huge vote
of confidence for our research team and the tremendous work they
do."
Lass said the funding has already sparked
new collaborations by 30 vision research investigators from 11
departments; boosted training efforts for future vision scientists;
strengthened research efforts in cataract, diabetic retinopathy,
glaucoma and neuroprotection, immunologic diseases of eye and
lazy eye and eye movement disorders; and catalyzed the development
of new technologies, including genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics.
Genomics is the study of how genes function,
while proteomics is the study of the proteins that these genes
produce. These studies generate a tremendous amount of data that
is interpreted with bioinformatics.
Researchers use bioinformatics to identify
genetic codes in individuals through DNA sequencing, an innovation
for finding clues to treatment and prevention of various diseases.
Using these techniques will enable more quickly researchers to
identify the genes that cause disease and develop new treatments
for prevention and cure.
Among the leading researchers at CWRU and
UHC are Lass, David Bardenstein, Susann Brady-Kalnay, Suber S.
Huang, Henry Kaminski, Timothy Kern, Vance Lemmon, M.Edward Medof,
Vincent Monnier, Ram Nagaraj, Eric Pearlman, and John Porter.
The research of Pearlman and Lass examines
immune mechanisms that underlie inflammation of the cornea, the
clear tissue window to the eye. By inducing allergic reactions
in animal models, they study the effect of proteins on inflammatory
cell recruitment and the development of allergic responses.
It is expected that results from their
research will lead to new therapeutic approaches to river blindness,
a disease that afflicts 18 million people in developing countries
and Pseudomonas aeruginosa keratitis, a bacterial infection of
the cornea commonly associated with abusive contact lens wear.
Bardenstein and Medof are examining the
factors that protect the surface of the eye from infection and
allergy. Their efforts could lead to safer contact lenses and
better treatments for ocular allergy.
Brady-Kalnay and Lemmon work on the factors
that promote optic nerve regeneration. Their studies could lead
to improved methods for the treatment of glaucoma.
Huang is directing the Retinal Diseases
Image Analysis Reading Center, a leader in targeting therapies
to eye diseases such as uveitis and diabetic retinopathy.
Kern, director of the Diabetes Research
Center at CWRU and UHC, is a national leader in studying the microvascular
complications of diabetes and its early prevention with new drug
treatments.
Nagaraj and Monnier are studying the biochemical
basis for cataract and diabetic retinopathy. Their studies could
lead to methods for delaying cataract onset and (with Kern) lead
to methods for preventing or delaying the onset of diabetic retinopathy.
Kaminski and Porter study the extraocular
muscles that control eye alignment and movement. Kaminski is studying
new methods to treat the crippling eye movement problems of myasthenia
gravis, a degenerating muscle disease. Using bioinformatics, Porter's
progress in researching the genetic makeup of these muscles could
lead to new therapies for crossed and "lazy" eyes, as well as
certain neuromuscular diseases.
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