Glaucoma researcher Pete Williams receives grant from American foundation
Pete Williams, researcher at Karolinska Institutet and St. Erik Eye Hospital, has been awarded a research grant from the American Glaucoma Foundation to develop a treatment for glaucoma and other eye diseases. With the grant of USD 75,000 (SEK 840,000), the Foundation wants to recognize groundbreaking, innovative glaucoma research. This is the second time Pete Williams has received the grant.
Approximately 80 million patients in the world are affected by glaucoma. It is the most common cause of blindness, but at present it is not known exactly what mechanisms give rise to the disease that damages the optic nerve.
The Glaucoma Foundation annually awards research grants to international research groups that carry out groundbreaking, innovative research to better understand and treat glaucoma.
Better treatment for glaucoma patients
The goal of the research is to develop a treatment for glaucoma and other eye diseases via two types of mechanisms that complement each other; one that preserves and one that creates new optic nerves.
“In the long term, the results of our research may mean that treatment can be improved at different stages of the disease for patients affected by glaucoma,” says Pete Williams, research group leader at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, KI, and at St. Erik Eye Hospital.
This is the second time that The Glaucoma Foundation has funded projects in Pete Williams' lab.
“It is a great achievement to receive recognition from the international community for the work we do here in Sweden, and it shows the strength of the glaucoma research we are developing here,” says Pete Williams.
The research group at Karolinska Institutet and St. Erik Eye Hospital will also collaborate with Richard Eva's research group at King's College London to investigate a more comprehensive treatment of how optic nerves are preserved and protrusions from nerve cells, so-called axons, can be regenerated inside the eye.
The text is based on a press release from St. Erik Eye Hospital.