Translational Optometry: Turning Research Into Treatment In Genetic Eye Disease
The first gene therapy for the eye has now been approved by NICE for use in patients. This talk discusses the processes involved in translating therapies developed in the lab into patient clinical trials and ultimately new treatments for patient use. The current gene therapy trials in Oxford for choroideremia, a genetic eye disease, are used to illustrate the process and highlight work still required for the future.
Jasleen Kaur Jolly is an optometrist and vision scientist working between the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Wellcome Integrative Neuroimaging Centre, University of Oxford, and Oxford Eye Hospital. She studied at Cardiff University and the University of Manchester, working across the world in various settings to gain a wide range of experience. She is actively involved in clinical research in the fields of genetic eye disease, gene therapy, low vision, and the connections between the eye and the brain in eye disease. She is currently undertaking an NIHR Clinical Research Doctoral Fellowship entitled, “Development of novel tests to assess visual function in patients with inherited retinal degeneration.” This project aims to investigate vision in inherited retinal degeneration by integrating psychophysics, retinal anatomy and brain imaging of the visual cortex.