A Sydney researcher working with stem cells to restore sight has won the 2022 Metcalf Prizes for Stem Cell Research, awarded by the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia.
Dr Anai Gonzalez-Cordero’s research aims to restore sight in people with inherited retinal diseases, by repairing or replacing damaged photoreceptor (light-sensing) cells in the eye.
She has already shown that she can grow cultures of healthy photoreceptor cells in a dish in the lab and then use the cells to replace the defective cells and restore sight in laboratory models of hereditary blindness. And she has shown that gene therapy can repair diseased human retinal cells grown in the lab as ‘mini-organs’, providing them with normal light-sensing ability.
Her $55,000 Metcalf Prize will contribute to developing systems to progress both concepts towards clinical trials. She is based at the Children’s Medical Research Institute in Western Sydney.
More than 16,000 Australians live with an inherited retinal disease, a broad group of genetic eye conditions. These conditions cause blindness in nearly eight million people worldwide and can occur from birth through to late adulthood. Vision loss occurs due to a ‘spelling mistake’ in the genetic code that causes cells of the eye to malfunction.