“This core grant from the National Eye Institute provides essential resources for research projects that help our established scientists better understand the fundamental causes and treatments of eye disease,” said Dr. Gregory Skuta, President and CEO of the Dean McGee Eye Institute and Edward L. Gaylord Professor and Chair of the  Department of Ophthalmology. “Support for this center core grant will provide the spark that will lead our vision research team at the Dean McGee Eye Institute and the OU Health Sciences Center to additional groundbreaking discoveries.”

The grant will fund research for a number of eye diseases, including age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and herpes virus infection, among others. The study is being conducted in two core modules located at the Eye Institute and two identical ones at the OU Health Sciences Center.

The NEI Core Grant for Vision Research program is designed to enhance an institution’s environment and capability to conduct research and to facilitate collaborative studies of the visual system and its disorders. At the Health Sciences Center, investigators in the College of Pharmacy and the Departments of Ophthalmology, Medicine, Physiology, and Cell Biology within the College of Medicine will benefit from this support. The Dean McGee Eye Institute houses the OU Department of Ophthalmology.

“Nearly one-fourth of the major National Institutes of Health research grants (known as R01s) on the OU Health Sciences Center campus are devoted to vision research,” said Dr. Anderson, who leads the grant team. “This core grant will only add to the strength, productivity, and growth of these already outstanding research programs.”