Rayner's Donation Funds Continuation of Eye Research Centre

XX ESCRS Meeting, Nice, France

Photographed (left to right) on the Rayner booth are: Alan Dickson, Director, Rayner; Andrea M. Izak MD, Instructor at the Moran Eye Center,Donald J. Munro, Managing Director, Rayner; Liliana Werner MD, Director of Research at the Moran Eye Center, Randall J Olson MD, Clinical Director at the Moran Eye Center; Prof David J. Apple MD, Director at the Moran Eye Center; Suresh K Pandey MD, Instructor at the Moran Eye Center, Salt Lake City, Utah.

On the occasion of the XXth Congress of the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons, Professor David J Apple MD announced the transfer of the 

research centre that he established, The Center for Research on Ocular Therapeutics and Biodevices, from South Carolina back home to Utah where it all 

began 20 years ago. It was in Salt Lake City that Dr Apple and Dr Randall Olson M.D. received the first explanted IOL specimen (IOL #1) in September 1982. This lens marked the pioneering start to what was then known as the Center for IOL Research.

The return to Salt Lake City is a special occasion. To mark the event Rayner announced at the ESCRS meeting that the company would make a non-restricted initial donation of $20,000. This would be for general support of the Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah.

“This generous funding from Rayner will go to support continuation of the work that Dr Olson and I established in Salt Lake City twenty years ago,” said Dr Apple. “My colleagues and I continued the work while I held the Department Chair at the Storm Eye Institute of Charleston, South Carolina. It is fitting that, as we bring the research back home to Utah, our first corporate donation comes from the first company ever to make IOLs – Rayner.”

Dr Apple added that the money from corporate donations, “goes directly to the costs of running the Center, handling explant specimens, autopsy globes with IOLs and autopsy globes for surgical instruction in our Center.”