Calvin Student's Dry Eye Research Part of Harvard Lecture

October 14, 2005 == MEDIA ADVISORY

The work of a Calvin student was part of a recent lecture at Harvard.

Holly Hoffman is a senior at Calvin College in Grand Rapids and majoring in
biochemistry as a pre-optometry student. The Alma, Michigan, native is doing
research at Calvin with John Ubels, a professor of biology who is an expert on
dry eye disease.

Recently Hoffman took pictures using Calvin's new fluorescence microscope that
revealed the CIC3 chloride channel in a section of lacrimal gland, the gland
which produces the tears that continually bathe the surface of the human eye.

It was a significant discovery.

"Although it has been demonstrated in other organs," Ubels says of the
chloride channel, "it has never before been shown to be present in the lacrimal
gland."

Ubels then made Hoffman's image part of a talk in late September at the
Ophthalmology Department of the Harvard Medical School.

The sophisticated fluorescence microscope used by Ubels and Hoffman is part of
an imaging system purchased this year with a $174,298 Major Research
Instrumentation Grant from the National Science Foundation.

"Until we got this microscope," Ubels says, "we only were able to do this kind
of work at the Van Andel Research Institute (VARI). Now we can do it here at
Calvin."

Hoffman appreciates the opportunity to use state-of-the-art science equipment
at Calvin.

For the full story see
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2005_06/hoffman.htm

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Received on Fri Oct 14 05:15:13 2005