The Tommy Salisbury Choroideremia Committee Celebrate Fundraising Success

Fight for Sight and the Tommy Salisbury Choroideremia Committee brought together over 50 supporters and researchers for an evening reception to celebrate the committee’s current £142,000 fundraising total.

The reception, held at 170 Queen’s Gate, Imperial College London, provided an opportunity to thank all the committee’s supporters and to invite the researchers funded by the Tommy Salisbury Choroideremia Committee to update guests on the progress of their research. 

Choroideremia is an inherited eye condition that causes progressive sight loss. The Tommy Salisbury Choroideremia Committee, run by Tommy’s mother Emma Salisbury and grandmother Dot Grindley, has been raising funds for research into choroideremia since 2005.  The committee is hoping researchers will find a cure for the thousands of people affected by choroideremia, including nine-year old Tommy Salisbury.

Professor Miguel Seabra from Imperial College London spoke about his research into potential treatments for choroideremia and his connection with the Salisbury family: “The Tommy Salisbury Choroideremia Committee has greatly improved our research capability and their funding has significantly sped up the research being done, especially in gene therapy trials. As a direct consequence of their support we are now at a very exciting stage of our research into new treatments for choroideremia.”

Robert MacLaren, Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford and consultant surgeon at the Oxford and Moorfields Eye Hospitals, also attended and spoke about the clinical aspects of choroideremia and how gene therapy might help in treating the disease in future. Michele Acton, Fight for Sight Chief Executive, gave a brief overview of the charity and the importance of funding research into choroideremia and other serious eye conditions.

Emma and Paul Salisbury were delighted the reception offered them a chance to personally thank all their supporters: “We are truly amazed at how much money we have raised, this would not have been possible without the continuous support of our wonderful family and friends.  Professor Seabra has given us hope for Tommy’s future and it was fantastic to hear how vital this money has been to his research and how future money will be spent.  There seems, at last, to be light at the end of the tunnel for Tommy and others affected by choroideremia.”

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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:
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.

The Tommy Salisbury Choroideremia Committee is based in South East London. They have been raising funds for research into choroideremia since 2005.