Our Mission

C. Stephen Foster, M.D.

The Ocular Immunology and Uveitis Service was established in 1980 by Dr. C. Stephen Foster for the purpose of caring for patients with inflammatory eye disease. The philosophy of his Service was to take a comprehensive and aggressive approach, both diagnostically and therapeutically, in the care of patients with infectious and immunologic ocular inflammation. Closely linked to the clinical services of the Service, the Immunology Laboratory was devoted to applied research in these same areas since the beginning. These same guiding principles form the underpinings of the newly established private practice, MERSI, the Massachusetts Eye Research and Surgery Institution , formed by Dr. Foster in an effort to further advance the cause of patient centered care in a more efficient and user-friendly atmosphere, and still linked with continuing laboratory and clinical research in our new state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Cambridge's biotechnology center, Kendall Square. Additionally, the training of ocular immunologists continues, at MERSI, where 4 postdoctural ophthalmologists continue their education in the MERSI fellowship training program.

The first Research Fellow was accepted into the Laboratory in 1980, and the first Clinical Fellow arrived in 1984. Together these research resources enabled Dr Foster to study the important, unsolved mysteries of blinding inflammatory eye diseases, to translate findings from the laboratory to the clinic and bedside rapidly, and to train the next (indeed, the first real) generation of ocular immunologists.

It is for this latter group, the Residents and Fellows who choose to enter this relatively unpopular and non-glamorous field of Ocular Immunology, that the Fellowship Training Program was created. This dedication to physician education continues at MERSI and through the creation of the Ocular Immunology and Uveitis Foundation, a tax exempt Foundation that is now the recipient of Dr. Foster's National Institutes of Health and other grants, and of the contributions from grateful philanthropic patients who share Dr. Foster's view of the future and passion for the goals set out by him.

The Program is a combined clinical and laboratory experience designed to develop in each Fellow an information base and associated research skills in immunology and in molecular biology which, when combined with his/her diagnostic and therapeutic skills learned from the clinic, will enable the Fellow to conduct the appropriate total care of patients with any inflammatory disease, local or systemic, with its expression anywhere from the eyelid to the orbit. To date, over 100 Fellows have been trained in this manner.