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About
Dr Thomas Edwards
Principal Investigator, Head of Retinal Gene Therapy Research
Dr Thomas Edwards investigates the potential of gene therapy to cure inherited retinal diseases.
Dr Thomas Edwards
Principal Investigator, Head of Retinal Gene Therapy Research
MBBS, PhD, FRANZCO
Dr Thomas Edwards is a vitreoretinal surgeon and leads CERA’s Retinal Gene Therapy Research team.
He undertook a PhD at the University of Cambridge in medical genetics before completing his ophthalmology training at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital (RVEEH) in Melbourne.
Dr Edwards’ research looks at the potential of gene therapy to cure inherited retinal diseases, aiming to establish the infrastructure and knowledge base necessary to develop treatments that may halt or partially reverse some inherited causes of blindness.
In 2014 he was awarded a Nuffield Medical Fellowship by the Australian Academy of Sciences to undertake further specialist vitreoretinal surgical training and research under Professor Robert MacLaren at the University of Oxford. Here, he worked on a world-first clinical trial of gene therapy to treat choroideremia, a type of inherited retinal degeneration.
Dr Edwards’ research has been supported by an Ophthalmic Research Institute of Australia (ORIA) grant, and he is the recipient of the University of Melbourne Annemarie Manciewicz-Zeldin Fellowship.
Key research questions
- Can we find novel therapies gene therapies to find a cure for inherited retinal degeneration?
- Can we find novel therapies, including gene therapy, to help support a cure for inherited retinal degeneration?
Selected publications
My team
Funding and support
Selected publications
Xue K, Jolly JK, Barnard AR, Rudenko A, Salvetti AP, Patrício MI, Edwards TL, Groppe M, Orlans HO, Tolmachova T, Black GC, Webster AR, Lotery AJ, Holder GE, Downes SM, Seabra MC, MacLaren RE. Beneficial effects on vision in patients undergoing retinal gene therapy for choroideremia. Nature Medicine. 2018 Oct;24(10):1507-1512. DOI: 10.1038/s41591-018-0185-5
Edwards TL, Xue K, Meenink HCM, et al. First-in-human study of the safety and viability of intraocular robotic surgery. Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2018;18:2, 649-656. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-018-0248-4
Edwards TL, Cottriall CL, Xue K, et al. Assessment of the Electronic Retinal Implant Alpha AMS in Restoring Vision to Blind Patients with End-Stage Retinitis Pigmentosa. Ophthalmology 2017;125:432–443. DOI: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2017.09.019
Edwards TL, Jolly JK, Groppe M, et al. Visual Acuity after Retinal Gene Therapy for Choroideremia. N Engl J Med. 2016;374:1996–1998. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc1509501
Edwards TL, Groppe M, Jolly JK, Downes, SM, MacLaren, RE, Correlation of retinal structure and function in choroideremia carriers, Ophthalmology, 2015 Jun;122(6):1274-6. DOI: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2014.12.036
See more publications
My team
- Dr Doron Hickey – Visiting Researcher
- Dr Sloan Wang – Research Fellow
- Ms Fleur O’Hare – Senior Research Manager
- Mr Daniel Liu – Hector Maclean scholar
Funding and support
Thank you to the following organisations for their support:
- ORIA
- The University of Melbourne
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