Nov 6, 2024

FBC Announces 2024 Research Grant Awardees, Providing Critical Seed Funding to Promising Early Career Researchers

Fighting Blindness Canada is excited to announce our 2024 Research Grant competition awardees. These grants, worth $784,105, provide crucial seed funding for Canadian vision researchers to move forward projects and generate data allowing them to apply for larger grants in the future. Without such funding, promising new research proposals would not be able to move forward. Previous FBC grant winners have gone on to become prominent world-renowned vision researchers who have made ground-breaking discoveries. This year’s awardees are Dr. Matthew Benson (University of Alberta), Dr. Brittany Carr (University of Alberta), Dr. Baohua Liu (University of Toronto, Mississauga), and Dr. Pierre Mattar (Ottawa Hospital Research Institute).

The 2024 grants competition was focused on supporting exceptional early career researchers. Applications from across the country underwent a rigorous review process that included internationally renowned researchers from Canada and the United States.

2024 Grant Awardees

Dr. Matthew Benson, University of Alberta

Project Title: Exploring the role of peroxisomes in lipid homeostasis in the retinal pigment epithelium

Award: $184,105

The goal of this project is to understand how defects in peroxisomes—small structures that help cells break down fats and neutralize harmful substances—lead to retinal degeneration and to test a potential therapy that could be useful for certain inherited retinal diseases (IRDs) and age-related macular degeneration.

Dr. Brittany Carr, University of Alberta

Project Title: Investigating the function of prominin-1 in photoreceptor outer segment morphogenesis and inherited blindness

Award: $200,000

The goal of this project is to investigate the physiologic function of the gene prominin-1 (PROM1), which is mutated in some inherited retinal diseases, including bull’s-eye macular dystrophy, cone-rod dystrophy, and a Stargardt-like macular degeneration. Dr. Carr will investigate the localization and function of PROM1, testing how efficient different splice variants are as gene therapies for Prom1-associated blindness.

Dr. Baohua Liu, University of Toronto, Mississauga

Project Title: Potentials of genetic rescue in restoring visual functions of a mouse model of congenital stationary night blindness type 2A (CSNB2A)

Award: $200,000

Congenital stationary night blindness type 2A (CSNB2A) is a genetic eye condition that causes trouble seeing in the night or seeing clearly even during the day from birth. The visual cortex is the part of the brain that receives light signals to create vision. It is not known how or if the visual cortex changes after retinal degeneration or vision loss occurs. This project will test a gene therapy for CSNB2A and ask if the gene therapy can restore vision both a short and long time after vision loss occurs.

Dr. Pierre Mattar, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute

Project Title: Functional characterization of a novel resident neuroimmune cell type in the normal and glaucomatous retina

Award: $200,000

Inflammation is known to contribute to the progression of many retinal degenerative diseases. Dr. Mattar has previously identified a new type of immune cell (double negative T cells, or DNTs) in the retina. The goal of this project is to better understand the role of a DNTs in the retina, and whether disruption of DNTs leads to inflammation that increases glaucoma progression.

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