In 2009, The Lasker/IRRF Initiative for Innovation in Vision Science was established to encourage collaborations for significant advances toward finding a cure or solution for vision loss due to retinal disease.  The first topic undertaken by the Initiative was astrocytes and glaucomatous neurodegeneration with preliminary sessions in Woods Hole, Massachusetts culminating in a conclusive session at the Janelia Farm Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in March 2010.

Resulting from these meetings was the allotment of additional funds to enable Dr. Rudolf Fuchshofer, Institute of Anatomy at the University  Regensburg, Germany, to spend two months in 2011 in the laboratories of Dr. Harry A. Quigley, Director, Glaucoma Service and Dana Center for Preventive Ophthalmology at Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.  Dr. Fuchshofer trained to analyze the optic nerve using a special software program, Metamorph Image Analysis, designed for histological analysis and which allows a semi-automatic quantification of axons within the optic nerve.  He also learned to analyze the loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGC) on whole mounts of the retina. 

Dr. Fuchshofer was sponsored by Dr. Ernst Tamm at the University Regensburg Institute of Human Anatomy & Embryology, who presented the topic, Norrin Initiates Signal Cascade in Müller Glia That Protects Retinal Ganglion Cells From Excitoxic Damage, at the March 2010 session of the Lasker/IRRF Initiative.