Retinal Research $50,000 grant

07 Sep 2022

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”.

Meet the researcher A/Professor Matthew Simunovic:

Associate Professor Matthew Simunovic a Consultant Vitreoretinal Surgeon at Sydney Eye Hospital & the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network, where he trains the next generation of eye and retinal surgeons. In addition, he is an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the Save Sight Institute, University of Sydney, where he leads the Retinal Disease and Rescue Group.

A/Prof. Simunovic completed his medical degree and PhD at the University of Cambridge before undertaking his general ophthalmic surgical training at Sydney Eye Hospital. This was complemented by further fellowship training in medical and surgical retinal disease at the University of British Columbia, Moorfields Eye Hospital London and the John Radcliffe Hospital/the University of Oxford.

A/Prof. Simunovic has published in major medical and ophthalmic journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Biomedical Engineering and Ophthalmology. He has extensive experience in assessing novel treatments for retinal disease, including pre-clinical surgical delivery, optogenetic approaches to vision restoration, functional biomarkers, clinical trials of gene therapy, novel approaches to subretinal drug delivery & electronic retinal implants. A/Prof. Simunovic has received over $1 million in research funding to date as principal investigator. He was the first Australian ophthalmologist to receive a Career Development Award from the Foundation Fighting Blindness, USA and has received funding from the Macular Disease Foundation Australia and the National Health and Medical Research Council.