IoO winners of the Moorfields Eyes Charity (MEC) Career Development Springboard Awards

My research aims to increase understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying vascular leakage induction in the retina. This will be achieved by examining calcium signalling in the context of leakage-inducing factors, to tackle retinal vascular leakage and consequently vision loss. I am very grateful to Moorfields Eye Charity for supporting my career and helping me to establish myself as an independent researcher, it means the world to me.

I recently received a Moorfields Eye Charity (MEC) Career Development Fellowship Award along with a MEC Springboard Award to support the development of my research programme. I am interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms that control the organization and dynamics of the microtubule cytoskeleton in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). The cytoskeleton plays a central role in the maintenance of cellular apico-basal polarity, and critical functions such as phagosome transport and degradation.  Since RPE dysfunction and loss of its structural integrity play an important role in the progression of Age-related Macular degeneration (AMD), understanding the detailed mechanisms that control these processes may potentially lead to novel therapeutic targeting approaches. I am also developing iPSC-derived tissue mimetic models that better recapitulate key features of both normal and patient retinal tissue to identify potential therapeutic targets and test novel therapeutic targeting approaches in the RPE. In addition to my new research programme, the MEC Career Development Award enables me to build on my previous Patented Inventorship Award, via UCL Business and the UCL Technology Fund, to develop a novel gene therapy technology, to treat some forms of inherited retinal degeneration and potentially some facets of AMD. As part of the Team of Inventors I am presently developing industrial links towards further preclinical evaluation and commercialization of the technology

Career Development and Springboard Awards will enable me to complete key stages of the translational work including acquiring and analysing more data from human participants, as well as hardware and software development in order to bring my research to a point where initial clinical implementation can take place. The MEC awards will also enable me in the pathway towards becoming an independent researcher through giving me the opportunity to strengthen my position and apply for further grant and fellowship applications.