Why give?

Nearly 2.2 billion people worldwide live with severe vision impairment or blindness, and with an aging population, these numbers continue to escalate steeply. Furthermore, many people living with vision loss do not have access to even basic eye care. These factors contribute to a serious unmet need globally in diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, and corneal degeneration, as well as in rare but debilitating eye diseases caused by genetics, inflammation, tumors, or other conditions.

Our vision at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford is to address this urgent problem head-on, with the goal to eliminate blindness and ocular disease in our community and abroad. To achieve that, we have assembled a comprehensive multidisciplinary clinical, research and educational endeavor with the support of our generous community brought together under the Spencer Center for Vision Research.

Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, genetics, imaging, stem cell medicine, computer science and engineering have given us real opportunity to cure these as-yet incurable diseases and to reverse the vision loss they cause.

Stanford’s unmatched depth and breadth of expertise in each of these fields and our unique ability to leverage these breakthroughs makes us optimistic that cures are on the horizon. But finding cures isn’t enough. We must get them to patients faster, so at the spencer Center and acrosll the whole Byers Eye Institute, we are focused on accelerating the development of therapies and expediting clinical trials.

From discovery to delivery, we have brought together the best minds and the best technologies and are determined to combat blindness and vision loss. If you believe in our vision and want to support our research efforts, please contact: