My name is Peter McCluskey, Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Sydney. I’m the Director of the Save Sight Institute, and currently I am the President of RANZCO.

 

How has Australian Vision Research contributed to ophthalmology?

The critical contribution that AVR makes is that it provides the seed funding for young investigators. I got multiple grants from the predecessor of AVR, ORIA, when I was a young clinician-scientist. And basically, it was one of the few places that was prepared to take a risk and let you investigate a new area, look at something that no one else had looked at. And it gave you just that little bit of working research funding to let you try out your ideas.

And certainly, those small grants have been repaid tenfold in subsequent research grant funding that has been enabled by that seed funding from AVR. So it’s a really critical place to help people start their research careers.

 

What excites you about the future of ophthalmic research?

It’s critically important that AVR continue to help young researchers and to provide that critical seed funding.

But I think there are two areas that are really going to become key areas for research. One is, I suppose broadly, what we call personalised medicine, which is accurately working out what the problem is, and then using a particular, specific treatment that’s specific for that patient with that disease. We already do that for chemotherapy now for many malignancies, and it’s going to increasingly become useful for inflammatory disease and gene-related disease.

And the other area, of course, is AI—artificial intelligence—and we’re going to have to embrace that and use it to our advantage.

 

Why does ophthalmic research matter?

I think there’s a famous saying that the basis of good medicine is good science, and that’s what really drives clinical medicine. Our research, not only in ophthalmology but in medicine in general, is driven by unmet clinical need. So we see a patient, we don’t have a treatment, we don’t understand the disease. So we go back to the research lab and we try to determine what the pathology is and what the pathophysiology is.

Once we understand the basis of the problem, that then gives us the opportunity to work with our scientist colleagues and our basic science researchers to develop new, specific interventions that will target that disease. And we’ve done that successfully on a number of occasions here in Australia.

We’ve helped to pioneer intraocular therapy for macular disease. We’ve developed specific therapies for other diseases, helped to pioneer treatments for inflammatory conditions, and we’ve got a very active number of groups working on specific new therapies for genetically determined eye disease.

So it’s really, really important that we have adequate funding to be able to keep driving that research.

 

What sets Australian Vision Research apart?

Well, I think AVR was developed by ophthalmologists who had a desire to give back and promote research, and it continues to be that way. Most of the research is done by ophthalmologists and their science colleagues in Australian universities, and the fact that the organisation is run by ophthalmologists providing research really differentiates it from other organisations. It shows the commitment of ophthalmologists and ophthalmology to want to give back and to improve the outcomes for our patients.

 

Why is it vital to support Australian Vision Research?

AVR was started by ophthalmologists. It’s always been run by ophthalmologists. It’s one of the two most powerful research organisations that fund ophthalmic research and basic vision science research in Australia.

I think it’s important that all of us as ophthalmologists support our colleagues who are clinician scientists and who are trying to help solve the unmet clinical needs of blindness in our community.

We’ve made enormous strides with the help of AVR and ORIA, its predecessor, and I think it’s critically important for our future, as ophthalmologists, to continue to support AVR to make sure that we give our patients the best outcomes.