Researchers at Georgia State University and Columbia University have received a $6.5 million federal grant to develop a potential treatment for a rare genetic eye disease that can lead to progressive vision loss and blindness.
The five-year award from the National Institutes of Health will support work led in part by Bingchen Yu, assistant professor of chemistry at Georgia State and a member of the university’s Center for Diagnostics & Therapeutics. Yu is serving as co-principal investigator alongside Tingting Yang and Stephen H. Tsang of Columbia University.
The project will focus on developing and evaluating compounds designed to treat best vitelliform macular dystrophy, known as BVMD, a rare inherited retinal disease that affects the retina and typically begins in childhood. There is currently no treatment for the condition.
“This award is an exciting step toward developing new therapies for patients affected by best vitelliform macular dystrophy,” said Yu. “I’m excited to partner with my collaborators at Columbia University and look forward to advancing discoveries that will improve patients’ lives.”
The NIH grant uses an R61/R33 funding mechanism, a two-phase, milestone-driven award intended to support the investigational new drug (IND) process. The structure is designed to help researchers move promising discoveries toward clinical development.
Georgia State said the funding highlights the growing national profile of its research enterprise and the Center for Diagnostics & Therapeutics, which brings together scientists from multiple disciplines to develop new approaches for diagnosing and treating disease.
Donald Hamelberg, Georgia State’s vice president for Research and Economic Development, said the collaboration brings together expertise in chemistry, therapeutics and vision science to address a major unmet medical need. “We are proud to see Georgia State researchers working to improve how people see the world,” he said.
Binghe Wang, founding director of the Center for Diagnostics & Therapeutics, said Yu’s success in securing the competitive NIH award reflected the momentum behind research at Georgia State. Regarding the grant, he added: “It speaks to our commitment to tackling important, complex questions and moving the science forward in meaningful ways.”
Yu, a faculty member in the College of Arts & Sciences, was recently recognized with the Early Career Research Impact Award for Natural and Physical Sciences at Georgia State’s 2026 Ignite Awards.
Source: Georgia State University.
