Researchers at the Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine have received a new, two-year grant from the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB) to continue investigating inherited retinal diseases, building on preliminary work supported by a $100,000 award from the CVM Endowed Research Fund (ERF).
The research, led by Dr. Billie Beckwith-Cohen in collaboration with Dr. Simon Petersen-Jones, is focused on understanding why gene therapy does not always restore the level of vision researchers hope to achieve in patients with certain inherited retinal diseases.
The work centers on Leber’s congenital amaurosis (LCA), a group of inherited retinal diseases that can cause severe visual impairment from birth. Gene therapy has provided a treatment option for some forms of LCA, but even when treatment improves vision, recovery can be limited.
The ERF award, funded through the MSU Pure-Bred Dog Endowment and approved in July 2025, gave the research team the support needed to establish its experimental systems and begin generating data. That included developing methods for studying retinal structure and function, and demonstrating that the team could carry out the early stages of gene therapy research needed to pursue the larger questions at the center of the project.
That work made the team’s submitted proposal to the Foundation Fighting Blindness more competitive, and the resulting two-year award from FFB will allow researchers to continue investigating the biological factors that may limit vision restoration following gene therapy.
“While the ERF grant isn’t large enough in and of itself to support the breadth of the work that needs to be accomplished, it allowed us to at least get the proof of concept and system running,” says Beckwith-Cohen. “That preliminary work is what helped us gain the external funding.”
The project also brings together expertise from across MSU, including faculty in the Department of Radiology. Dr. Kurt Zinn, who also has an appointment in Small Animal Clinical Sciences and serves as the Hickman Family Endowed Chair, and Dr. Norman Scheel are collaborating on the imaging aspects of the work, with the team interested in eventually connecting changes in retinal biology with retinal and brain function.
For this group of collaborators, the funding represents an opportunity to build on the current understanding of the biological factors that influence the success of gene therapy, and identify ways to help patients regain more visual function.
“We know we can improve vision, but we want to understand why we’re not seeing greater results,” Beckwith-Cohen says. “The question is: What is limiting that progress, and how can we overcome it?”