Thanks to an anonymous US$10 million gift, Stanford Health Care has established what is thought to be the first research centre dedicated to optic disc drusen (ODD).
Director of the new centre, Associate Professor Joyce Liao, said ODD is a poorly understood eye disease that can lead to visual impairment or even blindness. “Scientists still do not know what causes ODD, why and when it progresses and how to meaningfully treat it. But now we can really accelerate our knowledge about ODD; how to preserve vision and even restore visual function.”
The centre is building a database of people with the disease to track and measure changes, look at the genetic component and develop models to better understand the disease and how it progresses, said A/Prof Liao.
