Understanding the complexity of the human eye
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding the molecular and cellular complexity of adult human eye
IRAS ID
254911
Contact name
Majlinda Lako
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Newcastle University
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Being told that you have a visual impairment that can't be treated can be difficult to accept but this is the burden that 285 million people worldwide must bear. Vision loss can occur through the effect of faulty genes we inherit from our parents as well as the accumulation of damage and the effect of various diseases throughout our lives. Our ability to prevent and treat vision loss is closely linked with our knowledge of “how eyes form” and when and what is likely to go wrong.To date, defects in over 400 genes have been associated with inherited eye disease; yet despite the development of impressive gene and stem cell therapy approaches, biomedical research has not kept pace with public expectations for the treatment of blindness. However, our understanding of how disease-causing genes function is largely inferred from model organisms with a short life span that are unable to model the development of inherited and human age-related disease due to anatomical, genetic and functional species-specific differences. Thus, there is a great clinical need to improve our understanding of human eye so the mechanisms underlying developmental disorders can be identified and the tissue engineering efforts for generating cells for human transplantation can be improved. The key aim of the project is to use human eye samples to the cellular and molecular complexity of human adult eye structures.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - South Yorkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/YH/0420
Date of REC Opinion
29 Oct 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion