In December 2015, Lito Ramirez created DownSyndrome Achieves (DSA) with the mission to establish and maintain the first Down syndrome biobank in America open to all researchers studying the comorbidities, or other common diagnoses, in people with DS.
After years of preparation, in January 2020 DSA Biobank opened for business and began accepting applications from researchers. The first samples collected by the DSA Biobank are being shared with a researcher at the University of Oklahoma studying Keratoconus Dystrophy, a progressive and degenerative disease of the cornea that afflicts as many as 60% of the DS population.
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