Dr. Puthussery Awarded Glaucoma Research Foundation Grant
By Eric Craypo
$50K Shaffer Grant
Berkeley Optometry professor Teresa Puthussery has been awarded a $50K Shaffer Grant from the Glaucoma Research Foundation. The study, titled, A Novel Approach to Assess Selective Ganglion Cell Vulnerability in Glaucoma, will use a novel molecular approach to determine whether specific ganglion cell subtypes are selectively lost in post-mortem donor eyes from glaucoma patients.
Research Summary
Glaucoma is a progressive blinding disease that leads to the degeneration of ganglion cells, the nerve cells that transmit visual signals from the eye to the brain. There are many different ganglion cell subtypes in the human retina, each of which detects different features in the environment such as color, motion and fine spatial detail. In this study, we will use a novel molecular approach to determine whether specific ganglion cell subtypes are selectively lost in post-mortem donor eyes from glaucoma patients. The results of this study are expected to inform efforts to develop more sensitive clinical tests for early detection of glaucoma.