22 million euros for research new treatments for blindness
Researchers aim to develop groundbreaking new treatments for blindness by repairing faulty genes, printing new retinas with a bio-printer, investigating how zebrafish manage to repair their own retinas, and by developing artificial intelligence to determine who is eligible for which treatment. The consortium led by Radboudumc has received 22 million euros for this purpose from the NWO Gravity program of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
Koen Haak from the Department of Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence (Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences) is one of the researchers: "The project will develop a new generation of treatments for blindness. These treatments aim to restore visual signals in the eye, but the brain must also be able to process these signals. Our role in this project is to develop new, brain scan-based indicators that can be used to monitor the effectiveness of the treatments. Furthermore, we want to identify individuals who are likely to benefit from these treatments in daily life. These indicators are not only necessary to apply the new treatments in clinical practice but also as outcome measures in clinical studies."
The Lifelong Vision project has a duration of 10 years with an interim evaluation after 5 years.