Toth Wins Prestigious Hartwell Foundation Award

DURHAM, N.C. - Cynthia A. Toth, MD, a professor in Duke Medicine's Departments of Ophthalmology and Biomedical Engineering has been selected to receive a Hartwell Foundation Biomedical Research Award for her innovative work that has the potential to revolutionize imaging of infants' eyes.

Toth will receive support of $100,000 per year for three years. She is one of 12 individuals from 12 different institutions to receive one of the prestigious awards.

She is testing and working to perfect an innovative handheld, high-definition eye scanner designed specifically to meet the challenges of examining infants' eyes for retina-related problems. The optical coherence tomography (OCT) sends a beam of light to create a highly detailed image of the back of the eye.

While this advanced technology has been available to adults for several years, it has proven unusable for infants because it requires they stay still and rest their chin on the machine in order to get a quality image.

"The new system is called Spectal Domain OCT and it is very fast," Toth says. "It gives a very sharp image and we can see amazing things in these young children's eyes. We're now working on ways to improve imaging while the eyes are moving."

The device was designed by Bioptigen, a firm based in Durham's Research Triangle Park, with whom Toth and her collaborator, a Duke biomedical engineer Joseph Izatt, PhD, have been working closely since the mid-90s.

Premature babies are especially susceptible to eye problems. Roughly 16,000 preemies a year develop retinopathy of prematurity (RoP), which can destroy the retina. There is no way to save vision once aggressive RoP hits, so early diagnosis and treatment is crucial.

Toth says without the Hartwell Foundation grant "we'd be scraping to go forward with getting this ready for multi-center studies."

Hartwell Foundation President Frederick Dombrose, Ph.D., says Toth's work is exactly the kind of innovative research his foundation values. "The primary mission of The Hartwell Foundation is to grant awards to individuals for innovative and cutting-edge biomedical applied research that potentially will benefit children," he said. "It seeks to inspire innovation and achievement in all programs it supports."

Duke was one of 12 institutions nationwide that qualified to compete for the foundation's Biomedical Research Awards. These selected institutions held their own internal competitions to nominate four principal investigators for individual recognition.

"This award highlights the creativity and innovation of our faculty in biomedical science and engineering," said Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead. "We are pleased to have The Hartwell Foundation's partnership to help develop early-stage research with the potential to foster broad advances in medicine to benefit children."

Duke Chancellor for Health Affairs Victor J. Dzau, MD, said partnerships with private foundations such as Hartwell are increasingly important in academic medicine.

"This kind of award is rare and much appreciated, because it supports science that is promising but not sufficiently developed to qualify for federal support," Dzau said. "The Hartwell award is exciting because of its potential to speed the translation of basic science into new therapies."

The Hartwell Foundation began in 1999, and its initial gift was to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis to establish the Hartwell Center, a unique biomedical resource for integrating high throughput biotechnology and bioinformatics with academic programs.

In selecting participating institutions like Duke University, The Hartwell Foundation considers shared values relating to children's health, the presence of a medical school, strength in biomedical engineering, and the quality and scope of ongoing research. The foundation also considers institutional commitment to providing technical support, as well as to translational approaches that promote rapid clinical application of research results to the patient.

Other institutions that participated are The University of Michigan, The University of Pittsburg, The University of Virginia, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, The University of California-San Diego, The University of California-Davis, Cornell University, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, St. Jude's Research Hospital, Boston University, and Johns Hopkins University.