The Eye & Ear Foundation received a gift from a brand-new donor, denoting it for age-related macular degeneration research.
Larry Pietropaoli has had age-related macular degeneration for 30 years. He and his wife Patty watched the Vision Institute being built. “Wow, this is going to be great,” Patty thought at the time. “We’ll have this hospital where he can go for everything he needs.”
The Vision Institute – which opened in 2023 — is indeed a one-of-a-kind facility that has clinicians working alongside researchers, patient-centric labs, such as a sensory garden, life skills apartment, Streetlab, and driving stimulator, just to name a few of its many features.
The couple, who reside in the North Hills of Pittsburgh, had a tour of the Vision Institute this summer to learn more. They met John Ash, PhD, Jay Chhablani, MD, and Ethan Rossi, PhD. Since Larry was in machinery sales, the tour of the building included the Brian Frankowski Innovation Shop on the ground floor, which offers a variety of machining equipment for all researchers to use after required training. They were both “very impressed” with the facility.
Before they got out of the parking lot, Larry asked his wife, “What do you think?” She replied, “We want to do this.”
“I had the pleasure of meeting Larry and Patty on the day they visited the Vision Institute, and I was immediately struck by their warmth, curiosity, and sincere desire to make a meaningful difference for people affected by age-related macular degeneration,” said Lawton Snyder, CEO of the Eye & Ear Foundation. “Their generosity reflects both compassion and confidence in the extraordinary work being done here to advance vision research and care.”
Two generations of Larry’s family have had vision issues. If there is a genetic aspect to it, if there is a way he and Patty could help, they wanted to do so. Larry has been mainly just taking vitamins for his AMD, and while the vitamins have continued to improve, there have not been a lot of other options.
“Your people are pushing the science and the scope of our knowledge further and further down the pike,” Larry said. “We want to be part of where that’s going.”