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Two Blind Brothers On A Mission To Find Cure For Blindness

By Hannah Grace | Update Date: Jan 27, 2017 09:10 AM EST

Finding cure for blindness may be a long way off, but two blind brothers are focused on their vision to give hope to people with visual impairment through their clothing company called Two Blind Brothers. Bradford and Bryan Manning were diagnosed with an eye disease called Stargardt when they were still children. Now, they are designers who rely on their sense of touch to develop their products.

Two Blind Brothers incorporate braille within their designs to represent their struggle with blindness. In an interview with NBC News, Bradford said that they use braille because it is how he and his brother Bryan learned to read. All profits of the Two Blind Brothers clothing company will be donated to pre-clinical trials.

In less than nine months, Two Blind Brothers have already won the support of famous celebrities like Sir Richard Branson and Ellen DeGeneres. Bryan Manning is so optimistic that eventually a cure for blindness will be discovered.

The two brothers have been invited recently to "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." The talk show host and publishing company Shutterfly donated $30,000 to the Two Blind Brothers company. Everyone in the audience was also given a shirt.

Bradford Manning said that the money will go directly to research programs, future marketing campaigns to raise awareness and funding to help cure blindness.

Stargardt Disease, the condition that affects the Manning brothers, is also known as Stargardt macular atrophy. It is a rare disease that affects the retina and progress into blindness in children. It is a genetically inherited.

Recently, Acucela has revealed that Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted them an orphan drug designation for treatment of Stargardt disease. In their clinical studies with animals, they found that emixustat can stop and reverse the accumulation of A2E to preserve the integrity of the retina. Human clinical trial is now on planning stage to help find cure for blindness.

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