1# 凤凰涅盘
Recognized as one of the world’s foremost institutions for genetic, laboratory and clinical research for inherited retinal degenerative diseases, Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands is receiving $1.8 million over the next five years from the Foundation to serve as an FFB Research Center. In that role, Nijmegen will conduct collaborative laboratory and clinical research intended to advance potential treatments and cures and related human studies.
“Nijmegen has become not only a leading retinal research center in Europe, but an international pioneer in retinal science as well,” says Stephen Rose, Ph.D., chief research officer, Foundation Fighting Blindness. “Its researchers have been responsible for the discovery of 18 retinal-disease-causing genes, and they determined why defects in cilia, tiny tube-like structures in photoreceptors, are a common link to a broad range of vision-robbing retinal diseases. Nijmegen has also established an outstanding clinical operation for launching human studies for treatments like gene therapy.”
Dr. Frans Cremers, the Nijmegen Center Grant coordinator, says that one of his team’s goals is to identify and characterize all people in the Netherlands who are affected by an inherited retinal disease. “The Center Grant funding,” he adds, “will also strengthen our collaborative genetic research efforts across Europe as well as our endeavor to facilitate genetic research for retinal diseases in Pakistan and Indonesia.”
Finding disease-causing genes in European and Asian populations can provide a big boost to researchers and patients in the United States, where so many Americans have those ancestries. “The U.S. is a genetic melting pot,” explains Dr. Rose, “so it is imperative that we cast a wide, international net when searching for new genes.”
Nijmegen’s Center Grant will include support for:
•Identifying new retinal-disease genes — including those causing conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration — through the use of next-generation genetic discovery technologies.
•Developing a better understanding of retinal ciliopathies — including conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa, Usher syndrome and Bardet-Biedl syndrome — in which the transport of proteins critical to vision and photoreceptor health is compromised.
•Enhancing retinal imaging technologies to select and follow patients for future Leber congenital amaurosis (CEP290 mutations) and Stargardt disease gene therapy clinical trials.
The new Foundation Center Grant supports what is officially known as the Radboud University Nijmegen Research Center for Studying Retinal Degenerative Diseases and its principal investigators: Drs. Frans Cremers, Anneke den Hollander, Hannie Kremer, Ronald Roepman and Thomas Theelen. Co-investigators are: Drs. Rob Collin, Carel Hoyng, Jeroen Klevering and Erwin van Wijk.
Nijmegen is the third facility in Europe to receive a Foundation Center Grant, joining Moorfields Eye Hospital in London and the Institut de la Vision in Paris. |
