UC Davis Researchers Awarded $3.5 Million to Study Disease that Causes Vision Loss in Children
Autosomal dominant optic atrophy (ADOA) is a rare genetic disease that causes progressive and irreversible vision loss in both eyes starting in the first decade of life. There is currently no treatment for ADOA, which affects approximately 3 people per 100,000 worldwide.
UC Davis researchers will use a new 3.5 million grant from the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to develop a nonhuman primate model of ADOA to speed the development and testing of treatments for humans.
Sara Thomasy, professor of comparative ophthalmology at UC Davis in the Schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine and core scientist at the California National Primate Research Center, will lead the cross-disciplinary team developing this new model over the next five years.