Tim Corson, PhD

Tim Corson, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Eye Institute and in the Department of Ophthalmology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana. After growing up in Australia, England, New Zealand, and Canada, he completed BSc, MSc and PhD degrees at the University of Toronto, where he studied genetic changes in the eye cancer, retinoblastoma. Subsequently, as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Jean-François St-Denis Fellow in Cancer Research at Yale University, he learned to apply chemical biology approaches (the use of chemicals to probe biological systems) to diverse disease-related problems. In his own laboratory, he applies these techniques to mechanistic and therapeutic studies of antiangiogenic natural products and their derivatives, with the goal of developing new therapies for diseases of abnormal blood vessel growth such as AMD and ocular tumors. In addition receiving funding from the BrightFocus Foundation, his work has been supported by the International Retinal Research Foundation, Retina Research Foundation, and a National Institutes of Health career development award.

"It is a source of continual wonder and immense gratitude for me that donors provide such generous support for research. Sometimes, this comes as a result of their extensive interactions with researchers and the underlying science of a disease; but often, it comes from personal and family exposure to a disease and a hope that something – anything – can be done. In the latter case, there is thus an immense responsibility that we, as researchers, must take on to ensure that we do the best, most impactful work we can with the philanthropic dollars entrusted to us. We must squeeze as much research value as possible out of the funds we are privileged to receive. Fortunately, this imperative to be efficient with funding is entirely consistent with “doing good science”: how can we design experiments to efficiently and conclusively answer important research questions that will help prevent and treat disease? This is the question that we ask every day, and our donors’ generosity demands nothing less."