Schepens Eye Research Institute receives 'Roadmap' grant to develop center for curing ey...( ted from other disciplines. This is rea...)

Over the course of the three years, the Institute will hold a series of large and small symposia and workshops to develop new hypotheses on the causes of blinding eye diseases, which will touch on such known processes as blood vessel growth, inflammation, poor wound healing, and infections. In the second year pilot projects will test the hypotheses, and in the third year results will be evaluated. (See detailed abstract on Schepens website at http://www.theschepens.org/nih_roadmap.htm)

In addition to solving some of the major biomedical dilemmas involved in eye research, Schepens and NIH hope that the work of these research teams will in turn help find new treatments for incurable diseases in other organs of the human body.

According to Michael Gilmore, PhD, Ankeny Director of Research and Chief Executive Officer of The Schepens Eye Research Institute: "This award demonstrates that NIH recognizes eye disease as one of the most important problems facing the rapidly aging population. The selection of The Schepens Eye Research Institute as the location for that program reflects its national leadership in the search for new cures for blindness."

"With these new Exploratory Centers, we hope to remove roadblocks to collaboration so that a true meeting of minds can take place that will broaden the scope of investigation, yield fresh and possibly unexpected insights, and create solutions to biomedical problems that have not been solved using traditional, disciplinary approaches," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D.

"By providing this sustained and systematic suppo
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Contact: Patti Jacobs
pjacobs12@comcast.net
617-872-0364
Schepens Eye Research Institute
30-Sep-2004