UC Davis shares $5M eye research grant

Monday, December 29, 2008, 11:16am PST
UC Davis shares $5M eye research grant

Sacramento Business Journal - by Kathy Robertson Staff writer
University of California Davis ophthalmologist John Werner and researchers at three other universities will share a $5 million research grant to continue developing technology for three-dimensional imaging of eye cells.

The National Eye Institute grant could benefit the 20 percent of Americans over 60 who suffer from macular degeneration and glaucoma. It is expected to increase understanding of the origins of retinal and optic nerve disease and evaluate therapies to treat a wide spectrum of diseases that lead to blindness.

The Bioengineering Research Partnership, started in 2003 with an initial grant of $5 million, adapted technology to see retinal neurons in three dimensions. The next phase will focus on enhancing the contrast of the images in order to see even the smallest cells in the human retina.

“Our project has been described as the Hubble telescope of the eye,” Werner said in a news release. He is the project’s principal investigator and a professor at the eye center at UC Davis.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Duke University and Indiana University are the other partners in the study.