Lynn Hassman, MD, PhD, assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, has been named the recipient of the 2024 Philip and Elaine Ellis New Investigator in Ophthalmology Research Award, a $40,000 grant to support her work studying ocular inflammation and uveitis.
“Dr. Hassman is an exceptionally promising investigator at the interface of ocular inflammation and immunology. Her work will revolutionize our understanding of the mechanisms of inflammation in the eye and therefore in the selection of appropriate therapeutic agents,” says Alan Palestine, MD, professor of ophthalmology and director of the department’s Center for Ocular Inflammation.
“She is at the forefront of innovation in our department, being one the first true clinician scientists working both in the lab and seeing patients in clinical settings,” he continues.
Philip Ellis, MD, who served as department chair from 1960 to 1995, and his late wife Elaine established the fund in 2020 to support new ophthalmology investigators. The award grants $40,000 to a new researcher each year until 2025.
Identifying triggers of uveitis
Knowing the basics of what causes various types of uveitis immune responses is the foundation to being able to better treat patients. Uveitis, a form of inflammation in the middle layer of the eyeball is estimated to be the root cause of about 10-15% blindness cases in the U.S.
Treatments for the condition are limited and currently work for about 50-70% of patients, but thousands of targeted immune therapy drugs exist that could potentially be better matches for the remaining patients who don’t respond to available therapies.
“We don’t yet know why those available drugs fail on more than half of patients," Hassman explains. “My hypothesis is that there’s a different immunologic mechanism driving disease in different groups of patients. Put simply, we need to match the right drug with the right patients, but to do that we need to understand the immunologic mechanisms at play.”
Hassman’s research since arriving in the department last October has heavily focused on learning more about uveitis triggers, and she plans to expand her work with grant money from the award.
“In my research, I’ve learned that different types of uveitis have different types of immune responses,” Hassman says. “That likely means we should treat patients with different types of uveitis with different types of therapies.”
Hassman’s goal is to know which drugs are right for which patients based on characterizing their ocular immune response.
“Having more funds to work with through this award means we can accelerate work and hopefully reach answers more quickly,” she says. “Specifically, we will use this money to generate some critical tools to help us identify the antigens triggering B cells to become active in the eyes of some patients with uveitis. These experiments will get us closer to understanding how uveitis in these patients is immunologically different from other patients and will also give us leverage to obtain a larger National Institutes of Health grant down the road.”
Next steps for ocular inflammation research
Big breakthroughs are on the horizon for Hassman and her growing team of researchers working to better understand uveitis and potential targeted therapies.
This year, Palestine and Hassman started the process of completing DNA sequencing on 1,000 patients of the Sue Anschutz-Rogers Eye Center who have participated in a new uveitis biorepository registry.
The biorepository will form the basis for decades of research into the mechanisms of ocular inflammation by looking at genetics and protein expression and inflammatory mediators in these diseases.
“Right now, we are in discovery mode, characterizing the human ocular immune response with new techniques. This phase will eventually to clinical trials that target precise disease mechanisms in individual patients,” Hassman says. “It’s an exciting time to be part of a dedicated group of researchers and have the ability to investigate aspects of ocular inflammation that will have meaningful impacts on patients. I’m grateful to Dr. Ellis for having to foresight to invest in the future of ophthalmology research and am fortunate to receive these funds.”
This biorepository will form the basis for a decade of research into the mechanisms of ocular inflammation by looking at not only genetics, but protein expression and inflammatory mediators in these diseases.
