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Why Should We Do Eye Research?

Please donate at: http://www.nerc-charity.org.uk/donate Transcription: Professor Andrew Dick “Why Should We Do Eye Research? So, why should we be doing eye research? Fundamentally, the older we get the more we fear losing sight. In fact, it is known now, when we question people, that the elderly fear losing their sight second only to getting cancer. So there is a real need to facilitate and drive research to help patients live longer, healthier and with good vision. The way we look at doing this is through the National Eye Research Centre supporting fundamental research, from understanding molecules, the way cells work, the way tissues function and the eye sees, and looking through how we pull that through into changing lives, through clinical research and getting the benefit of earlier diagnostics, better treatments and overall better prognosis for the patients in the future. So, how does the National Eye Research Centre do this? It does it by supporting the young talents in research in PhD studentships, in what we call post-doctoral research, which is where students have finished their PhDs and undertake a good period of time in research, both at a laboratory bench but also in the clinical arena, in order to help patients in the future. So together we are supplying the cement and the foundations for our future scientists, for the welfare of our patients and directly creating the infrastructure we need to push through better care. With the advent of the human genome project, the ability to look at single cell function, the way we can look at the eye and its structure in higher detail clinically, we need a whole team, a collaboration not just of one university, not one laboratory but multiple centres in multiple countries. And together, using engineers, chemists, biologists, clinicians we can work together. So to do this, the National Eye Research Centre also supports fundamental research across institutions. It has been instrumental in driving the collaborations between ourselves in Bristol and the top teams in London, to the National Eye Institute in America, and then into China. In the United Kingdom there are 350,000 patients currently with severe sight-threatening disease. 80% of those are over 65. The problem we have is learning how to live healthier for longer and that includes maintaining our eyesight. So the importance of that is to be able to drag through what we are fundamentally finding in the laboratory and pushing that through into clinical trials. So, the National Eye Research Centre is fundamental in creating seed corn funds to push through into clinical trials. Please donate at http://www.nerc-charity.org.uk/donate