Foundation Fighting Blindness

Mission

The urgent mission of the Foundation Fighting Blindness is to drive the research that will provide preventions, treatments and cures for people affected by retinitis pigmentosa, age-related macular degeneration, Usher syndrome and the entire spectrum of retinal degenerative diseases. The Foundation is a beacon for those affected by these blinding diseases.

Services Provided

The primary mission of the Foundation Fighting Blindness is to drive the research to find treatments and cures for blinding retinal diseases. While the science advances, the Foundation utilizes its patient health and education efforts to inform people about the diseases, the research to overcome them, and disease management/coping strategies and resources.

How Many Served

The primary mission of the Foundation Fighting Blindness is to drive the research to find treatments and cures for blinding retinal diseases. While the science advances, the Foundation utilizes its patient health and education efforts to inform people about the diseases, the research to overcome them, and disease management/coping strategies and resources.

How Donations Are Used

Over the past four decades, the Foundation has raised over $760 million to support and advance the research that will reverse blindness and restore vision due to blinding retinal diseases.

Project Spotlight

Since its inception in the spring of 2006, VisionWalk has raised over $55 million to fund sight-saving research. As promising treatments move into critical human studies, the need for research funding is greater than ever.

Join the tens of thousands of people who have taken important steps toward a cure by participating in a 5K VisionWalk. Find a VisionWalk and register today!

Interesting Fact

Approved by the US Food & Drug Administration in December 2017, LUXTURNA® became the first gene therapy to receive regulatory approval in the US for the eye or an inherited condition. The treatment has restored vision in people with severe vision loss from Leber congenital amaurosis and retinitis pigmentosa caused by mutations in the gene RPE65. Approximately 24 emerging gene therapies for other retinal degenerative diseases are currently in clinical trials.

The Foundation Fighting Blindness invested about $10 million in more than a decade of lab research that made possible the RPE65 gene therapy clinical trial at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Foundation-funded research included: studies to understand the role of RPE65 in vison and retinal disease, development of animal models with RPE65 mutations, RPE65 gene therapy testing and development, and support for early clinical research at CHOP.