President Barack Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 in December, which included increases in spending for the National Institutes of Health and the National Eye Institute. That’s good news for research on eye-related disease, but there remains a big question on what the new administration means for future funding. The uncertainty puts an even bigger eye on the private funding of research.

Private funding is of increasing importance to researchers for a variety of reasons, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Among them:

  • “Large gifts can jumpstart new areas of research neglected by federal dollars or provide a jolt to stalled scientific advances.”
  • Private gifts make it easier to collaborate with international researchers.
  • Private funds often help support younger scientists — the average age at which researchers receive their first NIH grant is 43.
  • Private grants often come without the “strings” of government grants.

Additionally, private funding can fill big gaps between stages of research. According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, tax money often pays for basic discoveries, while private donations are more likely to support research to convert basic findings into cures. This “translational research,” works to develop drugs or treatments for diseases. Translational research bridges the gap between promising discoveries in the laboratory and their testing in the clinic — and it is the type of research in which the Discovery Eye Foundation specializes.

Dr. Tibor Juhasz, a professor of biomedical engineering at UC Irvine, invented the first femtosecond laser for use in eye surgery in the late 1990s. The laser is now also being tested for corneal cross-linking (CXL) to treat keratoconus. According to Juhasz, once the basic research was complete, it was very difficult to get funding for the translational phase.

“There are many obstacles for funding translational research,” Juhasz says. “It takes a great deal of money to bridge this gap, but it’s often outside the range of what is funded by agencies or universities. … Organizations such as DEF help with this very important middle step, which is often the hardest part to fund.”

“DEF’s mission is to provide essential ‘bridge’ funding for innovative treatment-oriented research projects,” DEF Medical Director Dr. Anthony Nesburn says. “This type of research funding leads to breakthroughs, such as the femtosecond laser for LASIK and cataract surgery. Other advancements for which DEF has provided such support include the development of models for eye diseases, stem cell therapies, new approaches to treat age-related diseases, vaccines to prevent blinding corneal infections, and examining the safety and mechanism of actions for novel eye medications. If not for private translational-stage funding, none of this would be happening.”

It is thanks to funding from private philanthropists that DEF’s site-saving research continues to make great strides toward cures and treatment of eye diseases, such as glaucoma, ocular herpes, keratoconus, diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration