Mark and Wendy Stavish

A $1 million gift from Mark and Wendy Stavish will support Lejla Vajzovic’s research to develop screening for early detection and treatment of eye disease that could be part of a normal well child visit.

Cynthia Toth CTO

In 2008, Cynthia Toth, MD, was an accomplished ophthalmologist, retinal surgeon, and clinician-scientist. She had been involved since the 1990s in the early development of optical coherence tomography (OCT), a technology that bounces light waves off different parts of the eye, providing a finely detailed look inside the eye’s tissues. In fact, at the time, OCT research from Toth and others had already changed how sight-robbing macular degeneration in older adults was diagnosed and treated, by revealing retinal tissue that could be measured in images and used to guide treatment and predict the course of the disease.

Matthias Gromeier, MD

In a daring yet successful experiment back in 1995, Matthias Gromeier, MD, discovered that genetic recombination of poliovirus with a distant relative, human rhinovirus type 2, eliminates the disease-causing capacity of poliovirus. Yet, the modified virus retains the ability to infect and damage cancerous cells, owing to their abnormal “wiring,” and—more importantly—provides powerful immune stimulation by inducing host antiviral defenses. 

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