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Million pound study to help prevent blindness
July 05, 2001A one million pound award to Cardiff University from the Medical Research Council is enabling researchers to conduct the world's most wide-ranging study into one of the body's most intriguing components - the cornea of the eye.
At the front of the eyeball, the cornea is the transparent 'window' through which we see the coloured iris and the pupil. Curiously, the cornea is the only connective tissue in the body that is transparent. The key to its transparency is thought to lie in both the nature of the collagen fibres that make up the cornea, and the molecules called proteoglycans that lie in between them. This structure is thought to help maintain the outward, curved shape of the cornea, which is essential for focusing incoming light on to the retina at the back of the eye.
Surprisingly, however, there is little research in the world aimed at increasing scientists' basic understanding of structure of the cornea.
The £1.1 million award to the Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences and the School of Biosciences is set to change this. The Cardiff research team, led by Professor Keith Meek (2), will use state-of-the-art synchrotron X-ray scattering techniques to probe corneal structure at the molecular level.
The research award recognises a multi-disciplinary expertise that is capable of providing a detailed map of the cornea. This should help explain why the cornea has the shape it has, and why the cornea sometimes becomes hazy or opaque - as a result of injury, disease or after laser refractive surgery.
"It is rather remarkable that eye surgery techniques have evolved before a proper long term study such as this," said Professor Meek. "Our study should explain why some corneal surgeries are more successful than others, and will help us to understand blindness due to corneal malfunction.
"By increasing our understanding of corneal problems we can alleviate the burden of corneal disease on the NHS. Our research will ultimately help to optimise procedures for a range of corneal conditions, from treatment of corneal astigmatism, to recovery of good vision after a corneal graft or cataract surgery, and even laser surgery to correct myopia."
-ends-
(1) U.S. National Eye Institute: "Vision Research: A National Plan 1999-2003", page 5.
(2) The scientists leading the research (Professor Keith Meek, Professor Stuart Hodson, and Dr. Andrew Quantock in the Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, and Professor Bruce Caterson in the School of Biosciences) are at the international forefront of their field. The team is acknowledged to have pioneered the technology for analysing corneal structure and transparency using high-energy x-rays generated by large particle accelerators (called synchrotrons) that drive electrons at speeds close to the speed of light and thus emit very intense radiation.
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