Clinical Research Directory

Study of New Mutations in Cone Disorders

High throughput sequencing gives the opportunity to improve the genetic diagnosis for patients suffering from retinal dystrophies and specially from cone disorders. However, a large number of mutations are identified, mostly in introns of the genes, and in silico analysis are not sufficient to assign the pathogenicity of these mutations, without which the diagnosis confirmation cannot be done. For that purpose, a functional analysis of intronic variants of unknown significance detected in patients, with minigene splice assays in parallel with the analysis of the effect of the variant on splicing directly in the cells of the patient, by analyzing the RNA from leucocytes, fibroblasts, lymphoblastoïd cells or precursor of photoreceptor cells, which is the only proof of pathogenicity for variants

Inherited Retinal Degenerative Disease Registry

The My Retina Tracker® Registry is sponsored by the Foundation Fighting Blindness and is for people affected by one of the rare inherited retinal degenerative diseases studied by the Foundation. It is a patient-initiated registry accessible via a secure on-line portal at www.MyRetinaTracker.org. Affected individuals who register are guided to create a profile that captures their perspective on their retinal disease and its progress; family history; genetic testing results; preventive measures; general health and interest in participation in research studies. The participants may also choose to ask their clinician to add clinical measurements and results at each clinical visit. Participants are urged to update the information regularly to create longitudinal records of their disease, from their own perspective, and their clinical progress. The overall goals of the Registry are: to better understand the diversity within the inherited retinal degenerative diseases; to understand the prevalence of the different diseases and gene variants; to assist in the establishment of genotype-phenotype relationships; to help understand the natural history of the diseases; to help accelerate research and development of clinical trials for treatments; and to provide a tool to investigators that can assist with recruitment for research studies and clinical trials.

Adaptive Optics Imaging of Outer Retinal Diseases

The objective of the study is to collect adaptive optics (AO) retinal images from human subjects with outer retinal diseases (diseases of the outer retina including photoreceptor, retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), basement membrane or choroidal pathologies) to develop new diagnostic methods, biomarkers, and clinical endpoints.