Queen's University Belfast - Charities back vision research

The Centre for Vision Science has been boosted by grants of more than £500,000 from three charities to investigate the leading causes of blindness in the UK. Over the next three years, a team of researchers at the Queen's University Belfast-based centre, led by director Alan Stitt, will carry out studies of sight-threatening conditions affecting diabetics and the elderly. The team, part of the School of Biomedical Sciences, is based at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital. The largest grant has come from the New York-based Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which has awarded Professor Stitt more than £250,000 for research into diabetic retinopathy - a disease that causes about 40 per cent of adult-onset blindness in the UK.