2015 Emory Eye Magazine | Page 7

Machelle Pardue (seen here, forefront), whose research focus is diabetic retinopathy, has a dual appointment at the Emory Eye Center and the Atlanta VA Medical Center. She collaborates with a number of Emory ophthalmology colleagues. With Iuvone and doctoral student Moe Aung, Pardue has studied use of dopamine to improve vision in animal models of diabetes. “This could lead to a new treatment,” she says. The results suggest that dopamine-restoring drugs—commonly used to treat Parkinson’s disease—may also be beneficial for diabetic retinopathy, a leading cause of blindness in adults. The results were published recently in Journal of Neuroscience. The research process in search of new or better tools for diagnosis and therapy is often, by nature, meandering and unpredictable. An idea may originate in informal conversation, attract interest from other colleagues, and engender additional trails of inquiry, which in turn may yield more questions than answers. Some research findings, including extremely important ones, are simply serendipitous, providing answers to questions that weren’t even being asked by those involved. Research takes time, creativity, patience, imagination, fortitude, confidence, determination and money. It also takes discipline to maintain a steady course as well as flexibility and open-mindedness to know when to change course in the face of new need or opportunity. At their annual retreat this past fall, Emory Eye Center faculty assessed the direction of their research, with the goal of articulating formal guidelines that could help steer their research priorities for both the short and long term. “We affirmed, first, that our research must center on translational initiatives, those that offer a direct benefit to patients,” says Timothy Olsen, director of the center. “Then we sought ways to determine the relative priority of current and future research efforts.” The group wanted to make the most of our existing resources, says Olsen, so they asked three questions: 1. Where is our greatest expertise? 2. Where is our current and future funding being directed? 3. And what eye-related illnesses create the greatest disease burden worldwide? The group then assessed research topics to see which rose to the top. “A top-priority project, for example,” says Olsen, “would be one with strong departmental expertise and strong external funding that addressed a vision problem causing blindness both locally and throughout the world.” Examples include diabetic retinopathy, agerelated macular degeneration, neuroretinal degeneration and cataracts. A somewhat less common disease, however, could also qualify as a research priority. Olsen cites eye cancer as an example. The center has extraordinary expertise in this area, led by pathologist/oncologist Hans Grossniklaus, whose work is complemented by that of the ocular oncology team: retinal specialists Chris Bergstrom and Baker Hubbard and comprehensive 2015 | Emory Eye 5