Grants

Research grants from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Initiative for Macular Research (BIMR) provide seed funding to BIMR Conference participants on a competitive basis. The grants program enables further pursuit of important new ideas and connections stimulated by the conferences, and affords scientists the opportunity to focus on novel interdisciplinary research collaborations on atrophic AMD.

In 2010, $1 million was available to disburse, which did not allow funding of all of the meritorious research proposals which were submitted.

The BIMR Grants Committee, chaired by Dr. Marie Csete, and including Drs. Alan Bird, Thomas  Budinger, Emily Chew, Dean Cole, Frederick Ferris, Richard Fisher, Morton Goldberg, Elaine Mardis, Jeremy Nathans, and Bruce Tromberg, carefully considered all grant requests and provided them to the Executive Committee in rank order.  The Executive Committee approved the recommendations of the Grants Committee without modification. The funds available for grants were allocated to eleven grants, in rank order.

2010 Grant Recipients

(in alphabetical order by Principal Investigator)

• Bruce Berkowitz, Ph.D., Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI - $100,000 for "Manganese-enhanced MRI Studies of Experimental AMD and its Treatment”.
• Wah Chiu, Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX - $100,000 for “A multidisciplinary approach to characterizing drusen and amyloid structures: a translational pathway for AMD therapy”.
• Lucian Del Priore, M.D., Ph.D., Columbia University, New York, NY - $100,000 for “Generation of an Animal Model of Geographic Atrophy and Its Treatment with Stem Cells”.
• Deborah Ferrington, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN - $100,000 for “Examining the interaction between mtDNA damage, genetic risk factors, and the development of AMD”.
• Scott Fraser, Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA - $100,000 for “Multispectral reflectometry to assess photoreceptor size, function and health”.
• M. Cristina Kenney, M.D., Ph.D., Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, University of California, Irvine, Orange, CA - $75,000 for “Association of Mitochondrial Haplogroups with Age-related Macular Degeneration”.
• Henry Klassen, M.D., Ph.D., Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, University of California, Irvine, Orange, CA - $50,000 for “GDNF-laden PLGA microspheres for treatment of atrophic AMD”.
• Daniel Kohane, M.D., Ph.D., Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, MA - $100,000 for “Photo-targeted nanoparticles for ocular drug delivery”.
• Yun Le, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK - $100,000 for “Mechanisms of atrophic AMD”.
• David Pepperberg, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL - $100,000 for “Plasmonic nano-antennas to enhance light sensitivity of retinal molecular devices designed for vision restoration”.
• Enrique Rodriguez-Boulan, M.D., Ph.D., Weill Medical College of Cornell University/Dyson Vision Research Institute, New York, NY - $100,000 for “Molecular basis of Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) - Pilot study for the development of novel therapeutic strategies”.