Pete Kollbaum, director of the Borish Center for Ophthalmic Research at the Indiana University School of Optometry, leads the Clinical Optics Research Lab. Photo by James Brosher, Indiana University
CooperVision is one of the world's largest contact lens manufacturers, with a portfolio of products for many types of visual challenges. Its research partnership with the clinical research team of Pete Kollbaum at the IU School of Optometry dates to 2000, when Ocular Sciences - a company that CooperVision later acquired - leaned on Kollbaum and the school's combination of optical and clinical research expertise.
Kollbaum's lab has ongoing collaborations with colleagues in Spain, England and China, as well as other labs at Indiana University. Photo by James Brosher, Indiana University
"We have been fortunate to work closely with the scientists at CooperVision for almost 20 years to help answer important questions and innovate products which improve vision for people around the globe," Kollbaum said.
This continuous industry support is due in large part to the lab's diverse team of research scientists whose expertise spans clinical care, psychophysics, optical design, computational optics and computer modeling.
"With the team we have, our group is unique in the breadth and scope of its abilities," Kollbaum said. "Specifically, we are one of the few groups in the world able to test an idea through innovative computational modeling and then evaluate potential clinical implementations of that idea through precise clinical testing.
"Matt Jaskulski and Martin Rickert lead the computational and analytical aspects for our team, while Dawn Meyer leads the clinical and organizational aspects of our team. These scientists are top of their respective fields, and they, along with many great graduate and optometry students, and other scientists and technicians, have been a key to our team's success and productivity.
"The other key to our success has been the very close connections we have with our colleagues within industry. This has allowed us to really work as one cohesive team as opposed to two different entities working together."
In a recent research collaborative endeavor, CooperVision called on Kollbaum and the Clinical Optics Research Lab to help develop and evaluate treatment options for those who struggle with nearsightedness, clinically known as myopia.
"Pete and the Clinical Optics Research Lab really try to understand the problem that we are trying to solve, the specifics of the stage that we're at in product development and the questions that we are trying to answer," said Paul Chamberlain, senior director of research programs at CooperVision.
Myopia occurs when the eyeball grows too long relative to its optical components. This causes light to focus in front of the retina instead of directly on it, resulting in blurry distance vision. It's a common condition, with more than 40% of people in the U.S. now affected.
It is particularly prevalent among school-aged children, as they spend much time engaged in "near" activities like reading, using tablets and playing videos games, and less time outdoors. Myopia is even more prevalent in east and southeast Asian countries, with South Korea, Singapore, China and Japan reporting that 80% to 90% of its population is myopic. By 2050, it is estimated that around 5 billion people worldwide will be diagnosed with myopia. One billion people are expected to be diagnosed with high myopia over the same time frame.
Although glasses and contact lenses can typically correct the vision of someone with myopia, this uncontrolled eye growth can lead to a stretching of the ocular tissues, which can cause permanent vision loss associated with myopic eye disease. Specifically, without intervention to slow the myopic eye growth leading to high myopia, it is estimated that over 13 million people will be blind, while an additional 55 million people will have some form of visual impairment because of their myopia.
For over the past decade, CooperVision has worked to develop and commercialize optical solutions to slow down myopic eye growth. CooperVision turned to Kollbaum and the Clinical Optics Research Lab to understand the optics of myopic eyes and how various technologies worked.
At the time, no technologies could evaluate how the lenses were performing when on the eye, but the IU lab adapted several on- and off-eye measurement technologies to address this need. Building on the foundational optics work of Kollbaum's graduate mentors decades earlier, current IU Professors Emeriti Larry Thibos and Arthur Bradley, adaptable, and comprehensive measurement and computational analysis techniques were developed.
"Our analysis tools are quite powerful for understanding the optics of eyes with and without corrections," Kollbaum said. "We predict how an eye would see with a particular optical correction across a range of real-world conditions, allowing us to develop, model and evaluate visual correction strategies."
Applying these tools, the Clinical Optics Research Lab partnered with CooperVision to explore the optics of highly myopic eyes, understand what was different about highly myopic eyes, and learn what could be done to potentially slow down the condition's rapid growth and prevent patients from ultimately losing their vision. These collaborative insights were instrumental in supporting CooperVision's development of MiSight 1 day, the first and only FDA-approved soft contact lens proven to slow myopia progression in children.
The lab has worked with CooperVision on many other research questions, as well as worked extensively with other industry partners. The culmination of this work in designing, developing and testing has led to commercially available vision care products and devices that help millions of people around the world see.
"With the close relationships we have with our industry colleagues, we're able to identify scientific research goals that answer key scientific questions necessary to advance the field, but also find answers which nicely align to the work of companies," Kollbaum said. "For us, this is the best possibly synergy, knowing that the work our team does will move directly to products which help improve the vision and lives of patients globally."
