Active

January 2024 - September 2024

Validating the killifish as a model to study retinal disease

Research Details

  • Type of funding: Fight for Sight Small Grant Award
  • Grant Holder: Dr Nicole Noel
  • Region: London
  • Institute: UCL Institute of Ophthalmology
  • Priority: Understanding
  • Eye Category: AMD

Brief plain language background

Retinal degenerative disorders are a group of eye diseases where light-sensing cells (photoreceptors) stop working and eventually die – causing progressive sight loss.

This group of disorders includes age-related macular degeneration (AMD), most commonly affecting older people, and inherited retinal conditions. These inherited conditions can have distinct genetic causes and variable onsets, but for most, disease is progressive and worsens with age.

What problem/knowledge gap does it help address?
The consequences of ageing on retinal health are well recognised. Despite this, how ageing causes biological dysfunction or impacts genetic retinal degenerations is poorly understood.

Studying ageing requires a suitable experimental model, although ethical issues, costs and animal lifespan must be considered to be feasible.

Killifish are a short lived fish that could provide a solution to this.

Aim of the project

To validate the killifish as an experimental model for retinal degenerative disease. This project also aims to further the career progression of the applicant through conducting independent research.

Key procedures/objectives

  • Examine how genes that cause retinal disease in humans are expressed in killifish.
  • Use gene editing tools to generate killifish that have retinal disease causing gene mutations.
  • Determine whether changes in the genes responsible for cholesterol production affects retinal ageing.

Potential impact on people with sight loss
Developing new models of age-related retinal disease using killifish could improve researcher’s understanding of the biological mechanisms of disease. Insight will be gained into changes associated with retinal ageing, which could be used to guide the design of novel treatments to slow or halt age-related vision loss.