“The Bench-to-Bedside Research Symposium never would have happened without Discovery Eye Foundation (DEF),” says M. Cristina Kenney, DEF research director and organizer of the symposium.
Bench-to-Bedside’s eighth iteration took place in June 2022 as a hybrid meeting (attendance in person and remotely via Zoom). As always, it was designed to educate and promote collaboration on basic and translational approaches to clinical problems. More specifically, the symposium aimed to bring together speakers and audience members from different fields whose work and research can apply to eye diseases.
In 2015, Gavin Herbert Eye Institute (GHEI) and the DEF-funded Discovery Center for Eye Research sponsored the first Bench-to-Bedside conference to encourage researchers from UC Irvine, GHEI and throughout Southern California to meet, find similar interests and develop collaborations. As a result of all the meetings since, collaborations were initiated, and grants have been submitted and funded.
More than 140 people attended this year, including researchers and physicians from various departments and universities, students, and local industry representatives. A poster contest was included, in which grad students, post-docs and trainees produced, displayed and discussed their own research projects, giving them the opportunity to interact with both faculty members and industry representatives.
New collaborations have already formed from this year’s symposium. Just one example has a UCI professor of ophthalmology beginning to work with a UCI professor of chemistry to address congenital cataracts. The same professor of ophthalmology has also begun a relationship with a UCI associate professor from the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic, as well as a representative from the AbbVie biotech company.
“To move research forward, you need interdisciplinary collaboration,” Kenney says. “Meetings such as this make sure that happens.”