Wellcome Career Development Award: Dr Tessa Dekker
Dr Tessa Dekker studies how development of visual system contributes to adaptive perception and action, with a strong focus on neural mechanisms.
This year Dr Dekker was the recipient of a Wellcome Career Development Award.
This provides funding for mid-career researchers from any discipline who have the potential to be international research leaders. The aim is to support them to develop their research capabilities, drive innovative programmes of work and deliver significant shifts in understanding related to human life, health and wellbeing.
We talked to Dr Dekker to find out more about this award.
- What is your role and how long have you been at the institute?
I am Associate Professor at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Experimental Psychology and I lead the UCL Child Vision Lab. I joined the institute as Postdoc with Dr Marko Nardini in 2012, and I obtained fellowship funding to set up my independent research in 2015.
- What is the purpose of the award?
The project funded by the Wellcome Career Development Award will develop a neuroscience framework to bridge the gap between regenerative therapies applied to the eye, and rescue of brain-wide visual processing. The primary goal is to understand how the brain can (re)learn to see after retinal function is rescued in patients with Inherited Retinal Diseases (IRDs), which affect millions worldwide and are the leading cause of blindness in children and young adults.
To achieve this, we will develop and apply innovative neuroimaging and psychophysics tools to explore how different types of visual input rescued through gene therapy can be processed and integrated by the brain. I will investigate neuroplasticity in three key IRD conditions that represent different stages of vision loss and recovery: (1) vision never developed due to congenital cone photoreceptor inactivity, (2) vision lost during early childhood development, and (3) vision lost later in life.
This research will advance our understanding of how the developing brain adapts to lost, restored, or completely new visual input and how we can enhance therapeutic benefits by promoting neuroplasticity. By working in close collaboration with world-leading specialists in gene therapies and accessing unique patient populations, this could have a transformative impact on how sight-restoring treatments are developed and administered.
What significance does this award hold for you, and how does it positively impact the field of ophthalmology?
For me personally, this is an extremely exciting opportunity because it allows me to apply my long-standing interest in the fundamental processes of vision development and neuroplasticity to understanding how next-generation treatments work and could work better in human patients, building on years of pioneering research in ophthalmology and neuroscience by colleagues at UCL, Moorfields Eye Hospital, and beyond. The award offers a unique opportunity to conduct the kind of long-term, in-depth research needed to achieve meaningful breakthroughs.
My hope is that ultimately this research will help unlock the full potential of regenerative therapies for sight rescue, provide a roadmap for integrating insights about brain-wide neural plasticity into clinical practice, and promote long-lasting benefits for patients undergoing potentially life changing treatments.