Research to Prevent Blindness’ mission and leadership makes the eyecare of today—and tomorrow—possible.
For decades, RPB grants have provided funding to create new discoveries in vision science. Learn about our current grants, as well as our exceptional grantees.
What do we know about common eye diseases? Find out here, in RPB’s new Learning Center for patients and families.
Visit our Media Center for timely updates—in text and video formats—on emerging research and vision science news.
Your support makes our vision-saving work possible! There are many ways to engage with RPB.
Dry eye is a chronic medical condition that develops when the eye's tear film does not lubricate and protect the eye's outer surface.
Researchers have long been constrained by the models (including animal models) that they are able to use for research into human diseases; sometimes, research in these models does not translate well to human therapies. But today, researchers from the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah, including Frans Vinberg, PhD, a recipient of an RPB / Dr. H. James and Carole Free Career Development Award, and collaborators from Scripps Research, have published research in Nature showing that they have revived light-sensing neuron cells in organ donor eyes, opening up new research avenues using human donor eyes.
According to a University of Utah press release, the researchers have restored communication between these cells as part of a series of discoveries that stand to transform both brain and vision research.
RPB is proud to have supported this groundbreaking work with Dr. Vinberg’s RPB / Dr. H. James and Carole Free Career Development Award and an Unrestricted Grant to the University of Utah Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences.
Frans Vinberg, PhD, and Fatima Abbas, PhD, of the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah in the Vinberg lab. Photo Credit: John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah.