Gund, Harrington families pledge $50 million in new funding to fight blindness; launch national initiative

The Foundation Fighting Blindness, a non-profit chaired by native Gordon Gund, and Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals Case Medical Center are collaborating to form “The Gund-Harrington National Initiative for Fighting Blindness,” focused on finding treatments and cures for people affected by inherited retinal diseases that lead to blindness. More than 10 million people in the United States are affected by this type of vision loss.

By Brie Zeltner, The Plain Dealer on October 08, 2014 at 7:00 AM, updated October 08, 2014 at 7:11 AM

CLEVELAND, — Two Cleveland families — Gordon and Lulie Gund and the Harrington family of Hudson — are joining forces to pledge $50 million for finding treatments and cures for people affected by inherited retinal diseases that lead to blindness.

The funds will finance the research of 30 scholars through The Gund-Harrington National Initiative for Fighting Blindness, a collaboration of Gordon Gund's Foundation Fighting Blindness, a nonprofit based in Columbia, Maryland and the Harrington Discovery Institute (HDI) at University Hospitals Case Medical Center.

HDI, now in its third year, was formed in 2012 as part of The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development, a $250 million, not-for-profit program launched with a $50 million donation from Ron G. Harrington of Hudson, along with his wife, daughter, son and daughter-in-law. The institute's goal is to speed the development of new drugs and bolster the work of physician-researchers.

Gordon Gund, a native Clevelander and former owner of the , lost his sight in 1970 at the age of 30 to retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative retinal disease. A year later, he formed the Foundation Fighting Blindness to fund research into the causes of blindness and its potential treatments.

"I had been losing my sight for five years and looking all over the place for a way to stop the progress of the disease or reverse it, and nothing was available," Gund told The Plain Dealer Tuesday in a phone interview from his office in . In June, Gund pledged to match at least $50 million in donations made to the Foundation.

"There was very little understanding about the retina, and very little research going on."

While a lot of progress has since been made, Gund and Dr. Brian Mansfield, deputy chief research officer at Foundation Fighting Blindness, said what's needed now is help accelerating promising research from the initial discovery phase to its ultimate availability to patients. Bridging this so-called "Valley of Death" is where HDI comes in.

Gordon and Lulie Gund. University Hospitals

"We're hoping to help our academic researchers, who are extremely good at making academic discoveries and doing initial research on promising compounds," to bridge the gap that exists between early development and clinical development by big pharma, Mansfield said. "Universities, academic medical centers and disease foundations put a lot of money into discovery, but they're challenged to show something for it at the end of the day," said Dr. Jonathan Stamler, HDI's director. "There's a chance to share the infrastructure we've put in place. These foundations have incredible resources to put towards the research of diseases, and we've sort of bridged this issue of the non-profit for-profit divide."

Ron Harrington, daughter Jill, wife Nancy, daughter-in-law Lydia, and son Ron, Keith Berr, Keith Berr Productions

The 30 scholars, who will be chosen through a competitive application process, will carry out their research at their home institutions and will receive support from HDI's Innovation Support Center and BioMotiv, a private Cleveland-based company aligned with HDI which can identify promising drugs and accelerate their development.

Mansfield said the first call for applications, which he anticipates will be "extremely competitive," should be announced within a month, and the newly-formed National Center of Excellence in Fighting Blindness hopes to announce the first funded scholars within six months. There will be additional calls for applications every year for the next five to ten years, Mansfield said. Any researcher in the United States working on treatments that may impact blindness is eligible.

Stamler said forming a national center through the collaboration of an academic medical center and a disease foundation is an entirely new model for drug discovery and development.

"This is a tremendous opportunity that now becomes a test case," he said, when asked if HDI might partner with non-profits dedicated to studying other diseases.

Gund, who has spent the past 43 years funding research into ways to treat and cure blindness, and rattles off words and phrases like "neurotrophic factors," "apoptosis" and "induced pluripotent stem cells" as smoothly as any scientist, said he's happy to have the national center in his hometown. He believes it will have a positive impact on the region.

"I'm glad we're getting it underway now," he said. "It should really make a huge difference." As for his own vision -- he can only distinguish light from dark due to the degeneration of the rods (the light-sensing cells that are responsible for vision in dim light) in his eyes -- Gund said he's encouraged by some of the recent research in mice using a protein extracted from algae to boost perception of shapes.

"Eventually they could develop enough [sensitivity] from that that I could maybe use it for mobility," he said. "It's amazing now how there's so much collaboration — so much more than there was even a few years ago. We're trying to be as active in that as we can."