Dr Danial Roshandel receives Near Miss Award to advance personalised treatment for corneal blindness
Innovative health and medical research across Western Australia has received a significant boost through funding awarded by the State Government’s Future Health Research and Innovation (FHRI) Fund’s WA Near Miss Awards (WANMA) Emerging Leaders program. Among the recipients is Dr Danial Roshandel, whose work is helping drive the next generation of sight saving innovation.
Dr Roshandel, researcher at the Lions Eye Institute, has been awarded funding to advance personalised ocular surface regeneration. His research aims to lay the foundations for using a patient’s own cells to treat severe eye diseases that cause vision loss and place substantial health and economic burdens on the community. By transforming a patient’s skin cells into eye surface cells and growing them on a clinically approved transplantable carrier, the project seeks to create a new, regenerative treatment option for end-stage ocular surface disease.
The 2025-26 round of the WANMA Emerging Leaders program received a record high volume of applications from Western Australian early- and mid-career researchers. The program is providing 12-month grants and 3-year fellowships to eligible researchers who will be required to resubmit their improved applications to the NHMRC. Recipients that met the eligibility criteria were awarded a share of the funding pool.
