Meet the researcher Dr Jed Lusthaus:
Dr Jed Lusthaus is a glaucoma specialist and clinical researcher at Sydney Eye Hospital and The University of Sydney. He is in the final year of a PhD studying how glaucoma affects fluid drainage from the eye. The goal of the work is to diagnose glaucoma earlier to prevent vision loss. Dr Lusthaus was named an AMP Tomorrow Maker in 2021 to support the development of Haemoglobin Video Imaging (HVI) for glaucoma research. Dr Lusthaus is a member of the Glaucoma Unit at Sydney Eye Hospital where he trains junior doctors and medical students. He also presents and discusses his research at local and international conferences.
Retinal Research $50,000 grant
Retinal degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in children and adults in Australia. At present, there are no approved treatments which can reverse this sight loss. However, one possible approach vision restoration in retinal disease is through cellular therapy to replace lost retinal cells. However, identifying a reliable source of stem or progenitor cells for cell therapy is an unmet challenge.
A/Prof. Simunovic’s group have identified surgical retinal explants as a potential source of retinal progenitor cells, which are capable of transforming into multiple cell types. These explants are the by-product of emergency surgery for retinal detachment repair and are usually discarded at the end of surgery. Their preliminary findings have been published in the journal, Retina (2021;41(9):1986-93).
“The Sydney Eye Hospital Foundation’s generous support will allow my group’s discovery to be exploited for therapeutic purposes in laboratory models of retinal degeneration. It will also allow us to better characterise surgical specimen-derived retinal progenitor cells”.
