Renovations are being made in Dodge Hall to house the country’s first laboratory dedicated to pediatric retinal research.

After donations totaling around $2 million were made to the university from the Clohset and Bergquist families through Dr. Michael Trese of Beaumont Hospital and the ROPARD Foundation (The Association for Retinopathy and Related Diseases), construction began on lab, an addition to the Oakland University’s Eye Research Institute.

The primary focus of the Virgina and Clarence Clohset Pediatric Retinal Research Laboratory will be on treatments for retinopathy of prematurity, a blinding disease in infants.

“As of now there are no cures for any of the blinding eye diseases … Dr. Trese, Dr. Anthony Capone and Dr. Kimberly Drenser have hypotheses which will hopefully lead to agents that can provide better treatment for the infants,” said Dr. Frank Giblin, ERI director.

Funds from the donation will allow the ERI to order sophisticated equipment to aide in the development of drugs for ROP.

The ERI has already ordered a state-of-the-art retinal imaging system, which will allow the imaging of the retinas of small animals.

PERRL’s research will be lead by Dr. Trese, Dr. Capone and Dr. Drenser. Twelve clinical ERI faculty are also from Beaumont Hospitals.

The ERI has had a longtime affiliation with the Department of Ophthalmology at Beaumont Hospitals.

“We’ve had a formal affiliation with the Department of Ophthalmology at Beaumont Hospital since 1989,” Giblin said. “We give lectures to their residents of ophthalmology and their residents come here and lecture our students, and we collaborate with them on research projects … it’s a very active collaboration.”

Students contributing to ERI research under Dr. Drenser will have multiple opportunities to work in the new PERRL lab.

Students involved in the ERI’s Summer Undergraduate Program in Eye Research (SUPER) will also have future opportunities to work in the lab.

“We have a lot of students working on this floor … students will definitely be involved,”  Giblin said.

The target completion date for the PERRL lab is the end of January.