Following the Lions Eye Institute’s recent appointment of Associate Professor Holly Chinnery as the inaugural Ian Constable Research Fellow, she is now establishing her research activities to build a corneal ocular surface platform and team. New technology and research breakthroughs are fuelling her work.
Associate Professor Chinnery’s research program uses preclinical models to investigate fundamental ocular immunology and explore novel therapies for corneal diseases that have an underlying inflammatory basis. Ultimately, the aim is to model conditions that affect the human ocular surface to improve and develop new treatments for patients whose sight has been lost to corneal disease, ocular surface diseases or trauma.
New cutting-edge imaging equipment at the Lions Eye Institute, the HRT RCM, is providing world-first imaging of immune cells, revealing details previously unseen and accelerating research.
The HRT RCM is being used by Associate Professor Chinnery and her team to further develop the discovery of T cells in healthy human corneas and is instrumental to their work. This technique, called Fun-IVCM, enables researchers to observe immune cells moving throughout the surface of the eye in the cornea. Associate Professor Chinnery’s research was recently published as a review article in Nature Reviews Immunology, a leading international monthly journal of science. Read the review article here.
We would like to acknowledge that this innovative technology was made possible by the generous contributions from our supporters including Lions Clubs of WA, the estate of the late Lance E Rann as well as the Institute’s Research Innovation Fund.
Time lapse videos showing immune cells crawling through the cornea of living human eyes. The fast moving cells are white blood cells and the bright white linear structures are corneal nerves.
WA’s first cornea research network
This scientific breakthrough, combined with the latest in imaging technology, has led to the formation of Western Australia’s first Cornea and Ocular Surface Research Network Collaboration. Led by Associate Professor Chinnery and Lions Eye Institute Research Fellow Dr Danial Roshandel, the network aims to connect corneal and ocular surface research stakeholders (i.e. clinicians, early career researchers, students and the broader community) in Perth.
By establishing this network, it is expected that corneal and ocular surface research can expand in Western Australia, which will ultimately lead to better outcomes for people living with corneal and ocular surface disease.
Revolutionary discovery by Associate Professor Chinnery unveils multiple immune ecosystems in the cornea
Associate Professor Chinnery’s groundbreaking discovery, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals the presence of specialised T cells—an important type of adaptive immune cell—in the cornea.
Balanced immune responses in the eyes are crucial for preserving vision. For years, ocular immunologists believed that the human cornea was inhabited by only one immune ecosystem. However, new imaging techniques have transformed our understanding of these immune cells, leading to the significant discovery that T cells, a completely different family of immune cells, also co-exist in the healthy human cornea.
This latest technology, called Fun-IVCM, provides clinicians and researchers the opportunity to gain deeper insights into the immune system and how it is altered in both ocular and systemic diseases, as well as how the climate, weather and air quality may impact on the behaviour of immune cells in the eye. This may lead to important new discoveries related to eye inflammation, particularly in eye diseases that have historically been underexplored. For example, Associate Professor Chinnery and her team are now working on understanding how the immune system may be involved in the progression of a corneal disease called keratoconus. This disease, which is usually diagnosed in late childhood can lead to vision loss in later adulthood. Using Fun-IVCM that has recently been established at the Lions Eye Institute, the corneal research team is planning to start clinical studies on this disease in early 2025.
Dr Danial Roshandel performs Fun-IVCM imaging on collaborator Dr Zahra Tajbakhsh, a corneal imaging expert at UWA Optometry.
