WKYC- FVF Awards: Commemorating medical breakthroughs

CLEVELAND — It was a very special night for the Future Vision Foundation as they highlighted their accomplishments this weekend. The first award was given to Rebecca Alexander, a world-renowned advocate for the blind. She was born with sight and hearing, but always felt something was off. Alexander was diagnosed with Usher’s disease, which is a degenerative disease causing those who are impacted to slowly lose all vision and hearing.

“I have about 10 degrees of my central most vision and I have this outer most periphery,” she said. The Future Vision Foundation is tying together visual arts and visual sciences. Suber Huang, MD, MBA is one of the two co-founders of the organization. “Celebrate discovery of visual science though impactful films that give hope that inspire and can be shared around the world,” Huang said. 

The group started out small but mighty with the goal to enhance the lives of those who are searching for new answers. They are using innovative technology to make breakthrough medical discoveries.

“We have patients who ask us every day: Isn’t something being done about this disease or another?' And, in fact there are,” Huang said.

Dr. Edwin Stone, the director of the Iowa Institute for Vision Research, was also honored.

“We are working on gene therapy for the earlier conditions where people still have some living photo receptors that can be rescued by putting a new gene in the cells,” Dr. Stone explained.

The entire research journey is then put together into a documentary to showcase the hard work by these incredible doctors. The documentaries made their screen debut during the ceremony.