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Flinders Centre for Ophthalmology, Eye and Vision Research

 

The Flinders Centre for Ophthalmology, Eye and Vision Research aims to improve outcomes for patients with blinding eye conditions affecting our community.

This multidisciplinary group is based in the Flinders University/Flinders Medical Centre Department of Ophthalmology. Its members include clinicians, researchers, and nurses. Our focus is on the nexus between vision and health, a major issue in Australia with its ageing population. Our approaches include programs in basic biomedical science, applied research, clinical research, translational research, and health services management research. One of our strategies is to train the next generation of clinician/researchers, and we have a particular interest in industry-related student projects.

 

 

  

Research at OEVRC 

 Researchers at Ophthalmology, Eye and Vision Research Centre (OEVRC)  have been awarded four projects which tackle the leading causes of blindness and vision loss. Two of these project are among 13 projects sharing a total of $6,215,636, awarded to Flinders University researchers in the latest round of National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funding.

Associate Professor Jamie Craig will lead a team investigating how to predict the risk of glaucoma, based on their recent discovery of two genes known to cause the debilitating eye condition.

Professor Keryn Williams will continue her pioneering work in improving outcomes in the treatment of a range of eye diseases through an understanding of the protein known as vascular endothelial growth factor.

Professor Konrad Pesudovs in collaboration with Doctor Lisa Keay from the University of Sydney and other colleagues have also been awarded funding for a project titled "Falls risk associated with cataract and after first and second eye cataract surgery".

Doctor Kathryn Burdon who will be collaborating with Doctor Jac Charlesworth from the University of Tasmania and others, will lead a project titled "Identification of glaucoma susceptibility variants by exome sequencing in extended pedigrees showing prior evidence of gene segregation".

We congratulate our four colleagues and the teams who will be associated with these projects.

 

 

 

Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC CVO  visits Flinders Medical Centre, Eye Clinic 

 Associate Professors Jamie Craig and Richard Mills, in the department of Ophthalmology, are chief investigators for two research projects funded by the RANZCO Eye Foundation based at Flinders University.
Associate Professor Jamie Craig leads the Australian and New Zealand Registry of Advanced Glaucoma (ANZRAG), which has established the world’s largest registry of advances glaucoma cases. The registry has been operating for the past 4 years under the team of Dr Kathryn Burdon, Bronwyn Ridge and Emmanuelle Souzeau.
The registry performs two vital roles. Firstly, assisting in accelerating future research projects aimed at identifying new glaucoma genes and genetic risk profiles. It also provides genetic risk profiles that can be fed back to patients and their specialists in the ophthalmic community to assist in the early detection of glaucoma, and helping establish the most effective treatment for advanced Glaucoma.
The registry database applies strict entry criteria based on all clinical and demographic information as well as obtaining and analysing DNA samples. In the last year the registry has yielded a globally significant discovery of two new genes linked to open angle glaucoma blindness.
The other project is the Australian and New Zealand Ophthalmic Surveillance Unit (ANZOSU), which is headed by Associate Professor Richard Mills, assisted by the Scientific Coordinator Lynda Saunders. The aim of this project is to establish resources that facilitate national active surveillance of rare eye conditions that are either important for public health or whose natural history or management is of clinical or scientific interest.

The knowledge gained from surveillance studies should have impact on areas such as clinical care guidelines, preventative treatment, service planning and public health or pathogenesis and classification of disease. Surveillance based research can be also used to address national health priorities. Our purpose is to develop and operate a population-based active surveillance system to facilitate research into uncommon ophthalmological disorders amongst ophthalmologists in Australia and New Zealand.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO) Eye Foundation’s Patron, Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC CVO  visited these two exciting projects on the 3rd July 2012 at the Flinders Medical Centre, Eye Clinic. She praised the work of the research projects and emphasised how important it is to encourage regular eye health checks. Her Excellency had a tour of the clinic and met some staff and patients to discuss the importance of research into eye diseases.  The tour ended with an afternoon tea in the clinic where the Governor General spent time talking with a number staff and patients.
  
 
L to R: A/Prof Jamie Craig, A/Prof Richard Mills, Dr Sharon Morton, Professor David Day,
Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC CVO   

 The eyes have it: improving the success of corneal grafts 

 'We’ve been able to show unequivocally that people, including quite elderly individuals, can be a corneal donor. What it means is that in Australia now there is virtually no waiting list for corneal transplantation.'

With corneal damage the second most common cause of blindness worldwide, the success of a corneal graft can be life changing for the 1,200 Australian patients who need a transplant each year.

Unfortunately, corneal grafts have a high long term failure rate, with many corneal transplant patients requiring more than one transplant over their lives. The challenge of turning this around has been taken up with determination, ingenuity and persistence by Professor Keryn Williams and her team.

'Twenty-seven years ago, we established the Australian Corneal Graft Registry – a clinical database of over 24,000 Australians who have received a corneal transplant,' Professor Williams says.

'This registry has allowed us to study the conditions crucial to corneal graft survival over time, and our findings have shaped the way corneal transplants are carried out.'

One of their most important research breakthroughs debunked the widely held view that corneal donors must be young – a belief that had severely limited the pool of potential cornea donors and often meant long waiting times. The research of Professor Williams’ and her team helped to prove that corneas harvested from older donors ‘do just as well’ as those from younger donors.

'This led to a dramatic cut in the waiting time for corneal grafts and today there is almost no waiting list for patients requiring a corneal graft in Australia, compared with other eye banks across the world that are struggling to meet demand.'

Thanks to Professor Williams and her team, the chances of the body rejecting a corneal graft have now also been reduced, after their discovery that immunological rejection was the most common cause of corneal graft failure.

As Professor Williams explains, 'In order to combat immunological rejection, drugs must be administered to the local area as well as targeting the systemic immune system, which controls the body’s response to the graft.'

Next steps

One of the areas showing promise that Professor Williams and her team are focusing on is gene therapy. In particular, they are examining gene treatment to increase the longevity of corneal grafts.

The team are also busy using nanostructured porous silicon as a scaffold to support ocular cells that can be transplanted into the eye. 'We know that normal cells can be transplanted into a healthy human eye. We’re now looking at ways that we might be able to create a model of ocular surface disease to test the success of cell transplantation in repairing disease.'

'In addition, retinopathy of prematurity is a condition affecting a proportion of
premature babies that can lead to blindness,' Professor Williams says. 'Early research is showing that a group of genes known as microRNAs might play a role in susceptibility to the disease in some very, very premature babies.'

Key facts

The cornea is the transparent window at the front of the eye which, if damaged, can cause blindness. Corneal damage is the second most common cause of blindness worldwide. 1,200 Australians need a corneal transplant each year — all graft donations are derived from human eyes. While 90 per cent of corneal grafts survive for 1 year, less than 50 per cent of corneal grafts survive for 10 years.

(Ascribe NHMRC Ten of the Best Research Projects - 2012)

 

inspiring achievement