Miami-based Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have received a multimillion dollar grant from HSS' Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.
The money will fund the Transplantation of Human Eye Allografts program, which is researching science on transplanting the entire human eye, according to a Dec. 6 press release.
Daniel Pelaez, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology at the Miller School, and David Tse, MD, an oculoplastic surgery and orbital disease expert at Bascom Palmer and professor of ophthalmology at the Miller School, will serve as co-principal investigators on the project.
Along with their team, the physicians are studying surgically recovering a live human eye and maintaining its function for vision restoration through organ transplantation.
For more than 100 years, physicians have successfully transplanted the cornea to treat specific types of vision loss, but transplantation of the entire eye, including the eyeball, blood supply and the optic nerve that connects it to the brain, is still considered a significant challenge.