Wayne State University receives NIH grant to combat sight damage from diabetes

Fu-Shin Yu, Ph.D., professor of ophthalmology, visual and anatomical sciences in the Wayne State University School of Medicine, received an award from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health for his study aiming to reverse the adverse effects of diabetes on eyesight.

The five-year grant for $2,167,882 will benefit Yu's research "Role of Programmed Cell Death Pathways in Bacterial Keratitis," which will investigate biological processes that contribute to defects in immune response in the eyes of those with diabetes and identify methods to reverse them.

Yu's research group uses mouse models of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, along with the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a model pathogen. In May 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed 81 cases of a drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain across 18 states, resulting in four deaths, 14 cases of vision loss and four cases of enucleation. This underscores the urgent need to better understand the mechanisms underlying the increased susceptibility and severity of bacterial keratitis in diabetic patients.