A life in eye research

 “I love working in vision research. My Fight for Sight funded PhD gave me the inspiration, training and enthusiasm to continue in the lab.”
Dr Alison Hardcastle

I became interested in vision as an undergraduate, and spent an enjoyable time in Professor Arden's lab at the old Institute of Ophthalmology. Professor Arden persuaded me to do a PhD in vision research and also encouraged me to learn the ‘new science of genetics’.

With funding from Fight for Sight I started my PhD in Newcastle in 1989 under the supervision of Dr Shomi Bhattacharya. You must remember that this was still the very early days of genetics research and so, when I started, nothing at all was known about the genetics of eye disease.

The aim of my PhD was to discover the genes expressed in the retina. The idea, at this early stage of genetics research, was to get more of a feel for what genes might be important for the eye. By doing this we could try and identify genes which, when mutated, might cause blindness.

During those early years I learnt a great deal about vision, the diseases people suffer from, and the new techniques of genetics and molecular biology.

I completed my PhD in 1993 at the Institute of Ophthalmology where Shomi Bhattacharya had been made a Professor.

I love working in vision research and Fight for Sight is partly responsible for this. The funding provided by Fight for Sight, enabling me to do a PhD, gave me the inspiration, training and enthusiasm to continue working as a postdoctoral research fellow on X-linked retinal diseases. I later took up a Lectureship here at the Institute of Ophthalmology and began to build my own research group.

Fight for Sight then provided the funding for Simon Brooks - a PhD student in my lab! Simon’s work discovered the gene implicated in Nance-Horan Syndrome, which causes babies to be born with cataracts and other birth defects. He was awarded his PhD last year and continues to work in my team. This is a real success story for Fight for Sight - funding the bright young scientists of the future. It is especially important to me as a former Fight for Sight sponsored PhD student myself.

I continue to research the genetics of blinding diseases. It is my dream that one day we will be able to offer a molecular diagnosis for all patients, to understand how these faulty genes go wrong and cause disease and, of course, offer a cure.