The development safe and effective therapies for treating age-related macular degeneration, the world’s leading cause of blindness, is a major priority for patients and healthcare providers. This blinding disease is characterized by irreversible loss of central vision due to progressive degeneration of retinal cells within the macula. Translation of new therapies has been limited by the lack of experimental models being able to faithfully mimic the human pathology. Typically, mouse models are used to induce certain pathological features of AMD but they lack a macular and the models are limited to faithfully replicate the human condition. The use of human cell based co-culture systems may offer a significant advantage to using animal models and enable us to model the human disease more closely. Additionally, developing more advanced in vitro models would help to replace the use of animals in research.
Together with a team consisting of biologists, biomaterial scientists and clinicians, along with input from our industrial collaborator, this PhD project will develop a state of the art in vitro human model to induce and treat AMD pathology. Once developed, this model will be used to screen new therapies to identify candidate agents for further translation.
This PhD project is part of CDT in Engineered Tissues for Discovery, Industry and Medicine, a partnership between the University of Glasgow, University of Birmingham, Aston University and National University of Ireland Galway. The CDT will train the next generation of interdisciplinary (engineering, chemistry, physics, maths and biology) leaders in developing in vitro tissues, sensing and diagnostics to develop humanised in vitro systems to drive better drug screening.
For more information about the benefits of the programme, funding, eligibility and EDI support please refer to our main CDT advert.
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