Accelerating Innovation

The Tej Kohli Cornea Program at Mass. Eye & Ear, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, is a $2m program to accelerate innovative and collaborative research to achieve unprecedented breakthroughs in corneal disease. The Tej Kohli Cornea Program includes cutting-edge molecular technology for the rapid diagnosis of corneal infection, and also GelCORE, an adhesive biomaterial for replacing corneal tissue.

The Tej Kohli Foundation pledged $2 million over the course of five years to establish the Tej Kohli Cornea Program at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. This will accelerate innovative and collaborative research to achieve incredible breakthroughs in corneal disease. 

Joan W. Miller, MD, Chief of Mass. Eye and Ear and Chair of Harvard Ophthalmology said that:

“We are really excited to embark on this partnership with the Tej Kohli Foundation in curing corneal blindness around the world. Corneal blindness is the third-leading cause of blindness worldwide, with 10 million people having bilateral corneal blindness.”

The Tej Kohli Foundation also supported the GelCORE project. This is an exciting and innovative technology that features adhesive biomaterial that has the potential to reduce the need for surgery to repair injuries to the cornea.

COVID-19 Genetic Vaccine

The Tej Kohli Foundation has provided funding toward a project led by Harvard Medical School scientists at Massachusetts Eye and Ear who are developing a vaccine that uses a harmless virus as a Trojan horse to deliver the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus into human cells to produce an immune response that could protect people from the disease.