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Dr. Milo Smith, Ph.D., from the Friedman Brain Institute, Institute for Next Generation
Healthcare, Mount Sinai, New York was presented a $65,000 check for research that will
identify small molecules with the ability to rescue amblyopia through cell-type specific
mechanisms, as well as set the stage to scale their approach to screen thousands of drugs for
their ability to treat amblyopia.
Making the check presentation were Sir Knights
from the Grand Commandery of New York: David
D. Goodwin, Past Grand Master of the Grand
Encampment and Past President and Trustee of
the Knights Templar Eye Foundation; Conrad
Johnson, Grand Senior Warden; present with
Dr. Smith was Hirofumi Morishita, M.D., Ph.D.,
Preceptor, and Associate Professor, Departments
of Ophthalmology, Neuroscience and Psychiatry

Critical periods are childhood windows of brain plasticity that respond to sensory and social
experience to enable development of optimal cognition and behavior. Disruption of critical
periods can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders - for example, normal visual processing in
the brain can be disrupted by early eye problems such as misalignment of the eyes (“cross
eyed”). If caught early, the resulting amblyopia can be corrected and good vision can be
restored. However, if the eye alignment is not resolved until after the critical period has
closed, the condition becomes permanent impacting 3% of adults.
Discovering drugs that can reactivate critical period
plasticity after a critical period has closed would be a
boon for treating plasticity-related neurodevelopmental
disorders, such as amblyopia. Among hundreds of
neural subtypes, this lab has recently identified a single
subtype marked by a protein called somatostatin that
when transiently activated in adult mice reactivates
critical period plasticity.
Inspired by this finding, they are using genetic
engineering approaches to grow these somatostatin
neurons in a dish with a fluorescent molecule called
GCaMP6 that glows brightly green when the neuron
becomes active. If successful, this study will set the
stage to scale this approach to screen 1000s of drugs
for their ability to activate this important neuron
type. Positive hits from this screen will be candidate
drugs to be tested further for their ability to reactivate
plasticity in adult mice and to restore good vision,
correcting amblyopia.

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