A four-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health will help University of Iowa researchers study the cellular events that cause vision loss in glaucoma.
Led by Markus Kuehn, PhD, UI assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, the team will investigate the degeneration of retinal ganglion cells. The death of these cells leads to vision loss, but what initiates and specifically causes their death is not known.
Current glaucoma treatment aims to decrease intraocular pressure and does not target the cellular pathways that affect survival of retinal ganglion cells. By understanding and eventually acting on those pathways, vision loss possibly could be prevented.
UI's Adams Receives Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Award
University of Iowa faculty member Chris Adams, MD, PhD, has received a three-year $405,000 Clinical Scientist Development Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Adams, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and a physician at the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, was one of 14 physician-scientists selected from a nationwide pool of 153 nominations
He will study the molecular mechanisms of skeletal muscle wasting, which occurs in conditions such as paralysis, diabetes, cancer, congestive heart disease and renal failure. |
