Department of Pharmaceutics Associate Professor Ed Kelly and graduate student Cate Lockhart (UW PharmD, ’13) are undaunted by the challenge of researching the rare blinding eye disease, Bietti’s Crystalline Dystrophy (BCD). “Only one in 70,000 people has the disease and no one is doing basic research on BCD except our lab,” Kelly said. As he’s gotten to know people with the disease, “what began as a curiosity, a ‘What if?’ has become a passion,” he shared. “I really want to find a treatment for this disease. It’s personal now.”
With such a low incidence rate, it is harder to get funding from traditional sources. The team instead is working directly with a patient driven biotechnology company, Reflection Biotechnologies, and has received funding from Institute for Translational Health Sciences (ITHS).
Ed Kelly’s BCD research is also supported by private funding. If you would like to make a gift to support Ed’s research into Bietti’s Crystalline Dystrophy, click here.
Read the full story on UW’s Health Science NewsBeat.