OOG / EYE Research Association has set its goal on helping to finance cutting-edge research to find treatments for blindness in children due to genetic eye diseases. The association also aims to inform people affected by these eye disease about the progress that is being made in (inter)national eye research.
“There are hopeful developments in the research field of gene - and stem cell therapy to combat blinding genetic eye diseases. This is an exciting time to develop pioneering new treatments to cure blindness in children. where a high financial impulse for scientific research is necessary” – according to Prof. Dr. Camiel Boon, MD, Professor in Genetic Eye Diseases
The entire proceeds of the donations go towards scientific research!
OOG is an organization run by dedicated volunteers, with no financial reward for those involved. Neither the advisory board, nor the “4Light” organizers receive any financial compensation. The entire proceeds of the donations are spent on scientific research into blinding genetic eye diseases, with the focus on those in children.
‘The Eye is such a beautiful and wonderous small organ. An instrument with a super speciality with which we can view our surroundings with all the details of its beauty and complexity. Unfortunately many things can go wrong with our eyes. Such a super specialized organ requires a very specialized approach. As an Eye Specialist, my focus is mainly on diseases/disorders of the retina, hereditary eye disease and micro surgery operations of the retina.
The daily contact with patients confronted with threatening eye disease, motivates me in my scientific research into innovative therapy. There are still too many eye diseases we cannot treat effectively. Together with my team we are trying to change that.’
As a 16 year old boy in the late seventies, I already dreamed of working with DNA. This was even before it was known that genetical defects played a part in hereditary eye diseases, and when it was inconceivable that it would be possible to determine the sequence of genes in DNA in humans within a few hours with advanced equipment in a laboratory. Even then I foresaw the tremendous impact that DNA research could have for man and society. That is what I wanted to contribute to. In the mid nineties the titel of my Ph.D. thesis was : “Toward DNA diagnosis and Gene Cloning of Retinal Disease Genes”; in other words: 25 years ago we were still searching for disease-genes and setting up DNA diagnosis for hereditary eye diseases. That has been successful, because today we can find a genetical DNA cause in 70% of the cases of hereditary retinal diseases.
