There are so many remarkable people who have joined CERA’s cause, working together to end blindness from inherited retinal diseases (IRDs).

Twenty-eight-year-old Olivia Depares and 15-year-old Louis Shepard both live with Usher syndrome – a genetic form of deaf blindness – and are outstanding advocates for CERA’s research.

While conditions like theirs were recently considered untreatable, we’re now close to a host of new ways to protect the vision of people diagnosed with these diseases.

This includes the work of Dr Jiang-Hui (Sloan) Wang, who is coming back to CERA after a stint at a prestigious US lab to continue his research in Australia, bringing back new skills to accelerate gene therapy research.

This year, CERA’s Annual Hope in Sight Giving Day is directly supporting his work, and I’m delighted that your donations, up to our $200,000 goal, will be matched dollar for dollar.

In this edition of Visionary you’ll also read about Associate Professor Raymond Wong’s work that has made exciting progress since CERA’s community gave it a Giving Day boost in 2021.

I’m also proud to share that alongside my collaborator Dr Ceecee Britten-Jones, we’ve now helped 100 people with an unknown IRD undergo specialised genetic testing to find an answer to their vision loss.

We’ve come so far thanks to your support, but we still have work to do. Please consider making a gift on our annual Hope in Sight Giving Day on Thursday 9 October to drive research towards real-world treatments for vision loss.

Together, with your support, we can put hope in sight.

Professor Lauren Ayton AM

Deputy DirectorCentre for Eye Research Australia

Olivia Depares hopes a scientific breakthrough can transform sight as much as it has hearing.

Five hundred and fifty people with an inherited retinal disease are now involved in the VENTURE project.

Associate Professor Raymond Wong’s research has taken its next step.

Gene editing that could help halt or even reverse vision loss in people like Louis Shepard with Usher syndrome.

A new CERA lab led by Dr Jiang-Hui (Sloan) Wang is bringing a cutting-edge technique for developing gene therapies to Australia.

We’re deeply grateful to the late Marjorie Roberts, who has left a gift in her will to support CERA’s research.