Dr. TJ Hollingsworth from University of Tennessee Awarded $70,000 Knights Templar Eye Foundation Grant to Study Early Onset Inherited Retinal Dystrophy

Dr. TJ Hollingsworth from Hamilton Eye Institute, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee was awarded a $70,000 grant to study: Suppression of Chronic Retinal Inflammation to Maintain Visual Function in a Spontaneous Polygenetic Mouse Model of Early Onset Inherited Retinal Dystrophy

Inherited diseases of the retina, which ultimately all result in blindness, are difficult to treat. This difficulty can be linked to highly varied disease attributes. For example, some of these diseases begin causing blindness at birth while others have a later onset of symptoms; some affect daytime and color vision first while others affect dim-light and peripheral vision first; some forms of retinal disease progress slowly with complete blindness occurring in older age while others progress so rapidly, the patients are blind in childhood. Because inherited retinal diseases are caused byalterations in the DNA of patients, known as genetic mutations, the only way to cure the disease is by fixing the mutation(s) through a process called gene therapy. While a form of gene therapy has been approved for use in humans, it can only fix one type of disease caused by one gene. Making gene therapies is a long and complicated process which can often take years to complete and even then, the process of approval for human use takes even longer. As these diseases can cause children to become blind, a time course of years is hardly adequate to save their vision. It is known that processes associated with the immune system, specifically those that enhance inflammation, are increased in retinal diseases. It is the goal of this proposal to test pharmaceuticals aimed at decreasing inflammation to preserve the vision of a mouse model of an early onset inherited retinal disease.