Co-investigator Lisa Ann Brennen, Ph.D., research associate professor; and Marc Kantorow, Ph.D., principal investigator, assistant dean for graduate studies and a professor of biomedical science, FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine, in the Kantorow Laboratory. (Photo by Alex Dolce, courtesy of FAU)
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine hope to conquer a major limitation in the ability for scientists to engineer tissues for regenerative therapies for age-related and degenerative diseases. They recently received a $1.3 million grant from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a project that will identify novel mechanisms for how immature eye cells activate genes to become mature visual cells. The five-year (total grant $2.7 million), multiple principal investigator grant will be conducted in collaboration with researchers from Thomas Jefferson University in Pennsylvania.
“This grant from the National Institutes of Health, National Eye Institute will enable us to identify the gene regulation pathways activated to program immature stem-like cells of the eye lens to attain their mature form and transparent function,” said Marc Kantorow, Ph.D., principal investigator, assistant dean for graduate studies and a professor of biomedical science in FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine.