UK charities drive retinal dystrophy consortium

UK sight loss charities RP Fighting Blindness and Fight for Sight are joining forces to drive a project that will accelerate understanding of the genetic causes of inherited retinal dystrophies (IRD).

The 'RP Genome Project' is being collaboratively funded by the two charities. It will bring together four leading genetic ophthalmology research centres: University of Leeds and St James Hospital Leeds, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre and Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, and University of Oxford and Oxford Eye Hospital. The programme is intended to facilitate greater collaboration between the centres and enhance the sharing of patient data that's essential in the development of clinical trials and future access to treatments.

The consortium will also later enable other such centres to join the programme and include patients for investigation, with a view to establishing a national patient data resource.

Professor Graeme Black, consultant in genetics and ophthalmology at Central Manchester University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and The University of Manchester, and strategic director of the Manchester Centre for Genomic Medicine, is responsible for coordinating the consortium of centres.

"We are bringing together the UK's finest scientists and clinicians, who will be working more closely than ever before to investigate the causes, and potential treatments, for inherited retinal diseases," he said.

For more information visit www.rpfightingblindness.org.uk or fightforsight.org.uk.