2016 The Next 30 Years By Lawton Snyder, Executive Director
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n last year’s Annual Report, we celebrated the 30 year history of the Eye & Ear Foundation by highlighting the impact support to the Foundation has had on improving care for patients suffering from disorders of the eye, ear, nose or throat. Your contributions to the Eye & Ear Foundation have allowed for significant advances in research by our physicians and scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. We now look ahead to the next 30 years, in anticipation of major scientific advances in patient care. With your continued support to the Eye & Ear Foundation, we will have more opportunities to directly impact lives in the following areas:
New technology to enhance and assess visual function Technologies to improve hearing and vision will reach new heights. One example is the retinal implant developed by our new Ophthalmology Chairman, Dr. José-Alain Sahel, with French company, Pixium Vision, and in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Palanker of Stanford University. Using special glasses, the implant converts light to electrical signals that stimulate the retina, as well as the brain. Clinical trials using this technology may begin as early as 2017, pending FDA approval. Technology, already in use, will continue to assess functional impairment for vision loss and balance disorders using simulated and virtual environments. PRIMA bionic vision restoration: improved visual perception with a retinal implant.
Flex Robotic System: a single port distal robot used for minimally invasive head and neck cancer robotic surgery.
Enhanced technology for better surgery Pittsburgh CREATES (Collaborative for Research, Education, and Technology Enhancements for Surgery) is currently aiming to make all surgeries minimally invasive through partnerships between scientists, engineers, and the technology industry. Restored vision through regenerative medicine For the past eight years, the Louis J. Fox Center for Vision Restoration has endeavored to restore sight through tissue regeneration, transplantation, and technology. The objective is not to treat vision loss, but to truly restore vision. Fox Center scientists are focused on the most common and important disease areas associated with vision loss, macular disease (retinal degenerations, including macular degeneration, retinal vein and artery occlusion), glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, optic nerve disorders, corneal scarring, and ocular trauma. A treatment for tinnitus To provide a solution for tinnitus sufferers, Dr. Thanos Tzounopoulos, focused his efforts in determining the mechanisms that lead to the triggering, and maybe eventually, the maintenance of tinnitus. We are working toward clinical trials to test Dr. Tzounopoulos’ pharmaceutical therapy for tinnitus. Advanced diagnostics to image the eye As technology advances, our ability to
image the eye will take significant strides. Adaptive optics uses an astronomical telescope and laser communication systems to image to the eye. Dr. Ethan Rossi is using this technology in clinical trials to identify early onset of degenerative retinal disorders to allow for early intervention. Personalized medicine Dr. Robert Ferris is using new technologies to determine the particular genes that contribute to each patient’s cancer and developing new drugs that can target head and neck/oral tumors. With support from the Marian Mosites Initiative for Head and Neck Cancer Research, Dr. Ferris is recognizing the role the immune system plays in allowing some cancers to develop and spread, leading to a breakthrough in our understanding of why some patients respond, while others do not, to the same therapy. Use of biologics and genetics Over the past decade, our Chairman of Ophthalmology, Dr. José-Alain Sahel, has led pioneering efforts in optogenetic vision restoration, a technique in which cells in the retina are genetically modified to express light sensitive proteins. This therapeutic technique has the potential to help patients visually impaired as a result of a genetic defect. Multidiscipline care teams Realizing head and neck cancer survivors have many lingering co-morbidities, Dr. Jonas Johnson, our Chairman of Otolaryngology, recently established the Survivorship Clinic for Head and Neck Cancer. It takes a multidisciplinary approach to addressing the individual needs of head and neck cancer survivors. The Survivorship Clinic team consists of a head and neck surgeon, speech language pathologist, dentist, physical therapist, audiologist, social worker, and nurse, all of whom have specialized training in the needs of head and neck cancer patients. During a clinic visit, our team will review your medical history and assess for cancer recurrence. This team will also provide information on healthy living, along with developing an individual treatment summary and survivorship care plan.