Promising Women Scientists Receive the 2009 Marjorie Carr Adams Women’s Career Development Awards

Three outstanding women scientists, who are pursuing careers in retinal degenerative disease research, are the recipients of the 2009 Marjorie Carr Adams Women’s Career Development Awards funded by the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Last year, FFB launched this career development program, made possible by a $1 million, six-year gift to FFB from the Marjorie C. Adams Charitable Trust, for which JPMorgan Chase Bank is trustee.

“Each of the awardees will play a role in reaching the Foundation’s goal of discovering treatments and cures for retinal degenerative disease” noted William T. Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of FFB. He noted that the Foundation is deeply grateful to the Adams Trust for the invaluable opportunities made possible by their generous gift.

The three recipients of this year’s Marjorie Carr Adams Women’s Career Development Awards are gifted and dedicated researchers. One is searching for new genes that cause retinal degenerative diseases; the second, developing a gene therapy; and the third is pioneering the documentation of retinal degenerative diseases in her native China.

Isabelle Audo, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Centre Hospitalier National Ophthalmologique in Paris, is studying approximately 2,000 patients from her center and three others in France, who have a retinal degenerative disease. Dr. Audo is creating a centralized DNA database that will enable her and her colleagues to find and describe new genes that cause these debilitating diseases, and to prepare for future clinical trials of new therapies.

An associate professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Iowa, Arlene V. Drack, M.D., is focusing on developing a gene replacement therapy for Bardet-Biedl syndrome. Children with this severe disease, which has an early onset and usually leads to blindness by age 20 years, become obese; have learning disabilities and kidney disease; and are at risk of hypertension, diabetes, and congenital heart defects.

Ruifang Sui, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., is an assistant professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Peking Union Medical College. Dr. Sui has traveled from her native China to begin her tenure as an awardee at the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. When she returns to China after six months, she will apply her new knowledge to understanding retinal degenerative diseases in China—setting up screening strategies, taking family histories, and collecting detailed clinical information.