UCI receives grants to study two diseases

The state’s stem cell agency have given $1.5 million to UCI researchers Sunday under two separate grants to study Huntington’s disease and an eye disease, school officials said Monday.

One will go toward researching stem cells and the other will fund the planning stages of the research for the disease, officials said.

UCI professor Leslie Thompson was awarded nearly $1.4 million to develop a treatment for Huntington’s disease. She also received $54,618 to coordinate the disease study. Another grant of $37,367 goes to Henry Klassen, a UCI ophthalmologist to study retinitis pigmentosa, a disease causing blindness.

— Adriana Sellers