RD Fund Announces New Chair and Expansion of Board of Directors
The RD Fund (Retinal Degeneration Fund)—the venture arm of the Foundation Fighting Blindness aimed at driving research toward preventions, treatments, and cures for the entire spectrum of retinal degenerative diseases—announced the appointment of Adrienne Graves, PhD, as the chair of its board of directors; and Jean Bennett, MD, PhD, Catherine Bowes Rickman, PhD, and José-Alain Sahel, MD, as directors.
“We are thrilled to welcome ophthalmology luminaries Drs. Bennett, Bowes Rickman, and Sahel to our board. Their unmatched business, clinical and scientific expertise and Dr. Graves’ leadership as chair of our board, puts the RD Fund in an optimal position to pursue our mission with the urgency it demands," said Rusty Kelley, PhD, MBA, managing director of the RD Fund.
Dr. Graves spent 15 years serving in leadership roles at Santen Inc., culminating in 8 years as its CEO, where she was responsible for growing the company’s global presence and advancing multiple ophthalmic products through development to approval and commercialization. Prior to Santen, she spent 9 years at Alcon in roles of increasing responsibility, including director of International Ophthalmology, and establishing Alcon's first Retinal Electrophysiology Laboratory.
Dr. Bennett is the F.M. Kirby Emeritus Professor of Ophthalmology at the Perelman School of Medicine and previously served as director of the Center for Advanced Retinal and Ocular Therapeutics (CAROT) at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to Dr. Bennett’s positions at the University of Pennsylvania, she has been an investigator at the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) for more than a decade. She also co-founded life science companies Spark Therapeutics (acquired by Roche), GenSight Biologics, Limelight Bio, and Opus Genetics.
Dr. Bowes Rickman is a professor in the Departments of Ophthalmology and Cell Biology and the George and Geneva Boguslavsky Endowed Vision Research Chair at Duke University. She is a translational scientist whose research efforts over 2 decades have been focused on the molecular/cell biology and pathobiology of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Dr. Sahel is a Distinguished Professor and the Eye and Ear Foundation Endowed Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and a Professor of Ophthalmology at the Sorbonne Université in Paris. Dr. Sahel founded and led the Institut de la Vision in Paris, the French National Reference Center for Retinal Dystrophies, and the Paris Ophthalmology Clinical Investigation Center until 2020. His research is focused on understanding retinal degeneration mechanisms, leading to several first-in-human promising trials in gene therapy, neuroprotection, prosthetics, stem cell, and optogenetics.