Fight for Sight awards over £500,000 in PhD studentship grants

“These awards will bring us nearer to preventing and treating a number of serious eye conditions. They will also help to build capacity in eye research at a time when funding for research is under pressure.”
Michèle Acton, Fight for Sight Chief Executive

Fight for Sight has awarded six new PhD studentships totalling £545,000 for research into age-related macular degeneration, diabetic eye disease, conjunctival scarring, retinitis pigmentosa and childhood blindness. From the 35 applications received for these highly competitive studentships, the six award recipients were selected from institutions across the UK including King’s College London, Queen’s University Belfast, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and the University of Southampton.

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. Each year the charity awards highly prestigious PhD studentships to enable recent science graduates to pursue a career in eye research under the supervision of some of the UK’s leading eye researchers.

The PhD studentships, starting in October 2010, have been awarded for research into the following eye conditions:

Age-related macular degeneration
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in people aged over 60. This project, supervised by Dr Jessica Teeling, Professor Andrew Lotery and Professor Hugh Perry of the University of Southampton, will investigate the link between inflammation and retinal damage which is a key feature of AMD. A better understanding of the causes of AMD is necessary to help researchers develop new treatments.

Diabetic eye disease
Diabetic eye disease is a major complication of diabetes and affects the sight of an increasing number of people. It is vital to diagnose the early abnormalities caused by the disease to enable more effective treatment and find ways to delay damage to the eye.  Led by Professor Graham McGeown and Dr Tim Curtis at Queen’s University Belfast, this study will look to discover how diabetes disrupts blood flow to the retina, which could lead to the development of new tests and sight-saving treatments.

Retinitis pigmentosa
Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a common inherited eye disease which causes the death of specific cells in the retina. The condition leads to progressive sight loss. This research, supervised by Professor Shomi Bhattacharya at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology in London, will aim to understand why a defect in a particular gene, which is found throughout the body, only affects the eye and can cause RP.  A better understanding of the causes of RP will have wider consequences for the development of future treatments.

Retinopathy of prematurity
Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a major cause of sight loss caused by the exposure of premature babies to high levels of oxygen which can damage blood vessels in the eye. Led by Dr Denise McDonald and Dr Tom Gardiner of Queen’s University Belfast, this project aims to find a therapy that will protect the blood vessels in the eye, whilst maintaining the vital levels of oxygen the baby needs.

Conjunctival scarring
Excessive scarring (fibrosis) is a common feature of eye conditions including trachoma and injury caused by chemicals. However, to date, there have been few studies looking at controlling this scarring in the eye. Led by Dr Julie Daniels, Valerie Saw, Professor David Abraham and Mr John Dart and at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, this research focuses on identifying the key molecules that promote the scarring process with the aim of developing a therapy to prevent scarring occurring. 

Congenital eye malformations
Each year one in 3,000 babies is born with a small eye or no eye at all, known as anophthalmia or microphthalmia (AM).  This is caused by a defect in the development of the eye and leads to severe blindness, requiring surgery and other long-term care to improve the vision and social well-being of the child. This work, led by Dr Andrea Streit and Dr Karen Liu at King’s College London, will investigate the processes which shape the eye to find out why they can sometimes be defective. Through this work, researchers will be better equipped to prevent AM in the future. 
 
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For more information call
Louise Elliott at Fight for Sight on 020 7929 7755
or visit our website: www.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 millions of pounds worth of 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 45,000 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 £1 million for the research unit at the dedicated children’s eye centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Fight for Sight’s current research programme of over £5 million focuses on preventing and treating age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and cataract as well as causes of childhood blindness.

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 Southampton
The University of Southampton is a leading UK teaching and research institution with a global reputation for research and scholarship across a wide range of subjects in engineering, science, social sciences, health, arts and humanities.  

With over 22,000 students, around 5,000 staff, and an annual turnover of almost £400 million, the University of Southampton is one of the country's top institutions for engineering, computer science and medicine. We combine academic excellence with an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to research, supporting a culture that engages and challenges students and staff in their pursuit of learning.

The University is also home to a number of world-leading research centres, including the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, the Optoelectronics Research Centre, the Centre for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, and the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute

Queen’s University Belfast
The Centre for Vision & 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.

CVVS research is genuinely multidisciplinary in nature, with an integrated mixture of approaches ranging from basic cell and molecular biology, pathophysiology of disease, genetic analysis, protein chemistry, patient-based investigation and clinical trials. Within this framework, the Centre educates medical students, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, giving unique opportunities for career development and advancement in biomedical research. 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 Ophthalmology
UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, a world-leading centre for eye research, is one of a number of specialised biomedical research centres within UCL (University College London). The Institute is committed to a multi-disciplinary research portfolio that furthers an understanding of the eye and visual system linked with clinical investigations targeted to specific problems in the prevention and treatment of eye disease. Its collaboration with Moorfields Eye Hospital, which has the largest
ophthalmic patient population in the Western World, opens the way for advances at the forefront of translational vision research.

Founded in 1826, UCL 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. UCL is the fourth-ranked university in the 2009 THES-QS World University Rankings, and the third -ranked UK university in the 2009 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Marie Stopes, Jonathan Dimbleby, Lord Woolf, Alexander Graham Bell, and members of the band Coldplay. UCL currently has over 12,000 undergraduate and 8,000 postgraduate students. Its annual income is over £600 million.

King’s College London
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.

King's has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise for British universities, 23 departments were ranked in the top quartile of British universities; over half of our academic staff work in departments that are in the top 10 per cent in the UK in their field and can thus be classed as world leading. The College is in the top seven UK universities for research earnings and has an overall annual income of nearly £450 million.