Fight for Sight awards over £1.4 million for eye research

Leading eye research charity, Fight for Sight, has announced over £1.4 million funding for research into the prevention and treatment of age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, corneal dystrophy, Stargardt’s disease and visual impairment in children.

Each year the charity awards grants for original and ground-breaking research into eye disease at leading universities and hospitals across the UK.

The new grants will support researchers based at the University of Cambridge, University of Dundee, University of Manchester, Newcastle University, University of Oxford, the UCL Institute of Child Health, King’s College London and Queen’s University Belfast.

Earlier this year Fight for Sight also awarded six PhD studentships totalling £545,000 for research into age-related macular degeneration, diabetic eye disease, conjunctival scarring, retinitis pigmentosa and childhood blindness.

Michèle Acton, Chief Executive of Fight for Sight, said: “The Fight for Sight grants programme is extremely competitive and sadly every year we receive many more applications than we are able to support. We have chosen to fund ten projects, across a number of disease areas, which offer real hope to the many people affected by blindness and eye disease.”

Grants have been awarded to support research into the following eye conditions:

Age-related macular degeneration/ Retinitis pigmentosa
Professor Majlinda Lako of Newcastle University, working with Dr Evelyne Sernagor and Mr David Steel, will investigate the potential of transplanting photoreceptor cells into the retina to restore sight in people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa - two conditions where the death of these cells can lead to sight loss. Professor Lako will collaborate with Prof. Robin Ali at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, London on the project.

Mr Tim Jackson based at King’s College Hospital and Dr Klaus Suhling of King’s College London will look at ways of improving treatments for wet AMD. Current treatments involve injections directly into the eye which can be uncomfortable and unpleasant. Determining how the drugs reach the diseased retina could lead to the development of more effective and easier to administer treatments such as eye drops.

A Fight for Sight Clinical Fellowship has been awarded to Mr Tiarnan Keenan of the University of Manchester for his research into new treatments for AMD. His work will focus on a particular gene mutation which increases the risk of the disease developing. The Clinical Fellowship is awarded each year to medical, nursing and health professional graduates who want to further their career in ophthalmic research.

Glaucoma
Dr Forbes Manson from the University of Manchester will look into the causes of Primary Open Angle Glaucoma (POAG) - one of the most common forms of glaucoma. In POAG, increased pressure causes damage to the cells at the back of the eye often leading to permanent blindness. This project aims to identify a new gene and determine its role in POAG which could lead to earlier detection and treatment, avoiding permanent damage to the eye.

An Early Career Investigator Award, supporting young researchers to progress their career in vision research, has been made to Dr Barbara Lorber at the University of Cambridge. Dr Lorber will look transplanting special cells taken from the retina to repair the damage to the optic nerve caused by glaucoma.

Diabetic retinopathy
Based on recent findings linking inflammation to the progression of diabetic retinopathy, Professor Alan Stitt and his colleagues Dr Heping Xu and Dr Hongliang Zong of Queen’s University Belfast will investigate the role of the protein ‘RAGE’ known to cause inflammation in several other diseases. In particular, he will look at the link between RAGE and the damage caused in the early stages of diabetic retinopathy. Preventing this early damage could stop the disease progressing and causing sight loss.

Dr Reinhold Medina Benavente at Queen’s University Belfast has also been awarded an Early Career Investigator Award. His research will focus on eye conditions such as diabetic retinopathy and retinopathy of prematurity where the blood vessels fail to supply the retina with oxygen and nutrients causing severe visual impairment. He will investigate a new cell replacement therapy which could prevent these sight-threatening conditions from developing.

Corneal dystrophy
Corneal dystrophy is a group of inherited eye diseases which cause sight loss.  This project, led by Professor Irwin McLean of the University of Dundee and Dr Tara Moore of the University of Ulster, will test a new treatment being developed to correct the genetic defects that cause corneal dystrophy.

Stargardt disease
This project, co-funded by Fight for Sight, will support Professor Robert MacLaren at the University of Oxford to collect essential pre-clinical data to enable a gene therapy trial for Stargardt disease, one of the most common forms of inherited retinal degeneration. 

Visual impairment in children
Dr Naomi Dale of the UCL Institute of Child Health in London will work with Dr Alison Salt and Dr Michelle de Haan to investigate different ways of supporting the development of babies and young children with severe visual impairment. She will compare the standard care offered to children with a new Development Journal tool, in particular looking at how practitioners use materials and how they interact with parents. The project will test the effectiveness of the new tool and will provide feedback that can be used to improve early intervention support. This project is jointly funded by the RNIB.

The application process for PhD studentships, project grants, Clinical Fellowships and Early Career Investigator awards for 2011 is now open.

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For more information:
call Louise Elliott at Fight for Sight on 020 7929 7755
or email press@fightforsight.org.uk

Note for Editors:

1) Fight for Sight
Fight for Sight is the UK’s leading charity dedicated to funding world-class research into the prevention and treatment of blindness and eye disease.

Since 1965, the charity has funded research at leading universities and hospitals throughout the UK. Our major achievements in this time include:
• saving the sight of thousands of  premature babies through understanding and controlling levels of oxygen delivery;
• restoring sight by establishing the UK Corneal Transplant Service enabling over 48,000 corneal transplants to take place;
• revolutionising the treatment for children with amblyopia (lazy eye);
• bringing hope to children with inherited eye disease by helping fund the team responsible for the world’s first gene therapy clinical trial; and
• providing £1million for the research unit at the dedicated children’s eye centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Fight for Sight’s current research programme is focusing on preventing and treating age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and cataract. We are also funding research into the causes of childhood blindness and a large number of rare eye diseases.

2) Awards
In order to ensure that the research funded is of the highest quality, Fight for Sight has established an extensive process of independent peer review. As a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) the charity’s peer review process complies with AMRC guidelines for best practice.

3) Institutions

University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge’s mission is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.   
 
Its reputation for excellence is known worldwide and reflects the scholastic achievements of its academics and students, as well as the world-class original research carried out by its staff.  Some of the world’s most significant scientific breakthroughs have occurred at the University, including the splitting of the atom, the invention of the jet engine and the discoveries of stem cells, plate tectonics, pulsars and the structure of DNA.  From Isaac Newton to Stephen Hawking, the University has nurtured some of history’s greatest minds and has produced more Nobel Prize winners than any other UK institution, with over 80 laureates.

University of Dundee
The University of Dundee is internationally recognised for its excellence in life sciences and medical research with particular expertise in cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and tropical diseases. The University has a top-rated medical school with research expanding from 'the cell to the clinic to the community', while the College of Life Sciences is home to some of the world's most cited scientists among 850 research staff from 58 different countries. See www.dundee.ac.uk for more details.

University of Manchester
The University of Manchester, a member of the Russell Group, is the largest single-site university in the UK. According to the results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, the University is now one of the country’s major research universities, rated third in the UK in terms of ‘research power’ behind only Oxford and Cambridge. The University has an annual income of £684 million and attracted £253 million in external research funding in 2007/08.

Manchester’s Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences boasts an annual research income of £56 million and has a diverse portfolio of the highest-quality teaching and research activity across its five component schools of Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Psychological Sciences. The Faculty more students graduate each year from the School of Medicine than from any other UK medical school.


Newcastle University
Newcastle University is a leading UK higher education institution with a reputation for international excellence built on the quality of teaching, research and work with the community and industry. The University is a member of the Russell Group of 20 leading UK universities that are committed to maintaining the very best research, an outstanding teaching and learning experience and unrivalled links with business and the public sector. The University is based in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, in North East England. www.ncl.ac.uk/

Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology
The Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology (NLO) was founded in 1942 to support eye research at the associated Oxford Eye Hospital which was originally established by the ophthalmologist Robert Doyne in 1896. Currently the NLO specialises in research into retinal diseases, including artificial vision, gene therapy, stem cell treatments and non-photoreceptor vision


King’s College London
King's College Hospital is part of King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC), a pioneering collaboration between King's College London, and Guy's and St Thomas', King's College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts. For more information, visit www.kingshealthpartners.org.

King's College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (Times Higher Education 2009) and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart of London, King's has more than 21,000 students from nearly 140 countries, and more than 5,700 employees. King's is in the second phase of a £1 billion redevelopment programme which is transforming its estate.

Queen’s University Belfast
The Centre for Vision and Vascular Science (CVVS) at Queen's University Belfast is one of four Research Centres within the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Science (MDBMS).

The largest component of the Centre is vision-related research, which has emerged as a leading programme in academic Ophthalmology in the UK, especially in the areas of age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. The research strategy of the Centre is to build on this foundation to develop complementary world-class vascular research, to include diabetic microvasculopathy and cardiovascular remodeling. In terms of locality, most of the research is located in recently refurbished, state-of-the-art laboratory facilities based in the Royal Victoria Hospital campus with some research also being conducted in the Belfast City Hospital.


UCL Institute of Child Health
The UCL Institute of Child Health, in partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital, is the largest centre for paediatric research outside the US and plays a key role in training children’s health specialists for the future.

Founded in 1826, UCL (University College London) was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine.