Tampa Bay Business Journal - by Margie Manning Senior Staff Writer
YBOR CITY — A renovated cigar factory that now houses one of the country’s largest eye banks is expanding to add research facilities designed to speed treatments for people suffering from vision loss.
“For most research that takes place now, we procure the tissue and have to send it to a pharmaceutical company,” said Jason Woody, the institute’s executive director. “The biggest problem with that is transportation if you have tissue with a short shelf life. Now, instead of shipping it across the country, we will do it here.”
The institute serves 61 of Florida’s 67 counties, and for the past three years it’s been either the No. 1 or No. 2 provider of corneas for transplant in the United States, according to the Eye Bank Association of America. It procures about 6,000 pieces of tissue a year, half for corneal transplants and half for research.
“We hope to increase the research to as much as 6,000 pieces of tissue a year in the next 24 months,” Woody said.
Many eye banks work with the National Disease Research Interchange in Philadelphia, which warehouses and distributes research tissue to projects and researchers across the country, said Rusty Kelly, a spokesman for the Eye Bank Association of America. Several eye banks are university based and will work with researchers at those institutions, Kelly said.
“Lions Eye Institute is unique in building a dedicated facility to research tissue,” Kelly said.
Developing collaborations
Within a couple of years, Lions Eye Institute expects to house 10 to 15 researchers. Some could be employed by the institute, while others would be employed by universities or pharmaceutical firms but using the institute’s research facility, Woody said.
The need for more research is critical, said Dr. David Epstein, chairman of the Duke Eye Center and chair of the department of ophthalmology at Duke University. The fear of going blind is the second-biggest health concern of Americans, according to a National Eye Institute survey, and eye diseases that cause blindness such as macular degeneration and glaucoma are increasing in prevalence as the population ages, Epstein said.
The bulk of the eye research in the United States is done at academic medical institutions and funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute.
Medical schools with physicians and researchers in a variety of disciplines provide the critical mass that Epstein said is needed for successful “team science.” One scientist in a “remote outpost” can’t bounce ideas off other researchers, he said.
“It’s increasingly difficult to be a successful scientist in isolation,” said Dr. Paul Sternberg, chairman of the Vanderbilt Eye Institute at Vanderbilt University and VP-elect of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. “Collaboration across disciplines is vital.”
Woody said the research that will take place at Lions Eye Institute will complement what occurs at academic medical centers.
“We’ve done projects with University of Florida and University of Miami, but we haven’t had a facility to offer them,” Woody said. He also hopes to develop a collaborative relationship with University of South Florida.
Driving competition
The academicians also questioned funding for an independent research facility. Research dollars are tight because the NIH has had a flat budget for the past few years. Too often, nonprofits will start programs without adequate funding or establishing an endowment for operations, Sternberg said.
Initially, the Lions Eye Institute will charge researchers a processing fee for the tissue they use to recover its costs, Woody said. But once the research center is established and there’s infrastructure in place, he expects to look at creating an endowment and will be looking for financial donors.
The Lions Eye Institute research facility is expected to open in late October or early November. The construction budget is about $1.2 million with another $500,000 in expenses to equip the labs.
Lions Eye Institute isn’t focused on taking part in the commercialization of discoveries in its research facility, Woody said. The organization simply wants to support the groups doing research and expedite the drug discovery process.
“If we shorten the span by two or three years, the benefit is finding a cure for the disease much sooner,” he said. “Our goal is to drive competition, to bring drugs to market faster and at the end of the day benefit those who have eye diseases.”
Despite his concerns, Sternberg said any additional research is welcomed.
“The fact that [Lions Eye Institute] is continuing to invest in our field gives me a feeling of gratitude toward them and optimism about our future,” he said. “This is a very exciting thing, not just for the Tampa area but for our field.”
