A team of a dozen cyclists—including a blind U.S. Paralympics track cycling national champion—pedaled across Iowa to raise awareness of and funds for Project 3000, a University of Iowa-based effort seeking a cure for a rare childhood blinding eye disease.

Team Project 3000 rode 442 miles, from Council Bluffs to Burlington, as part of the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). The team's inspirational leader is Clark Rachfal, a U.S. national medalist in track cycling who has been losing his sight since childhood and who has Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), one of the blinding eye diseases that Project 3000 seeks to cure. Rachfal, whose competitive cycling activities have been supported by the Verizon Foundation and by generous colleagues at Verizon, rides a tandem bicycle with a sighted partner.

The mission of Project 3000 at the UI is to find and offer genetic testing to the estimated 3,000 Americans with Leber congenital amaurosis, which causes severe vision loss or blindness and typically strikes during early childhood.

Key Partners

Genetic testing helps confirm the diagnosis, discover the genes responsible and leads to treatments and a cure. UI ophthalmology researchers are committed to this approach to finding the causes, cures and eventual prevention of LCA and—through what they learn during Project 3000—other blinding eye diseases. Key partners in Project 3000 include Chicago Cubs star Derrek Lee and Boston Celtics CEO and co-owner Wyc Grousbeck, both of whom share a desire to find treatments and a cure for LCA.

The idea to form a RAGBRAI team to support Project 3000 originated with Paul Rosenthal, a Washington, D.C., attorney who is chair and a founding member of an advisory board to the UI Carver Family Center for Macular Degeneration, of which Project 3000 is a part. The center is a unit of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.

"I have had the privilege over the years of dealing professionally with numerous Iowa businesses and government officials, and as a result I have developed a great respect for this wonderful state," said Rosenthal, who manages the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm Kelley Drye and Warren. "One of Iowa's, and indeed the nation's, great treasures is the Carver Family Center for Macular Degeneration at The University of Iowa. Because I have seen first-hand the enormous talent and dedication of the center's scientists and staff to their mission to find the causes, treatments, cures and preventions for inherited eye diseases, it is only natural for me to want to express my appreciation and gratitude by riding across the state on RAGBRAI."

"We are closing in on effective treatments for LCA, and the support created through this RAGBRAI cycling team will bring us even closer," said Edwin Stone, MD, PhD, director of the UI Carver Family Center for Macular Degeneration and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "Paul Rosenthal's efforts to bring our team together, and Clark Rachfal's involvement, are both greatly appreciated."

For more information:

Project 3000

UI Carver Family Center for Macular Degeneration

Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences

UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine

Edwin Stone, MD, PhD