A $304,000 State Government seed grant will be used to commercialise a pioneering solution for assessing glaucoma risk in clinical settings.
South Australian company Seonix Bio is advancing the new polygenic risk score (PRS) test developed by a world-leading research team comprising experts from Flinders University, the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, the SA Local Health Network within SA Health, and University of Tasmania.
Often known as 'the silent thief of sight', glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. It affects an estimated 80 million people globally, including 300,000 Australians over the age of 40.
The PRS is the first test able to estimate glaucoma risk sufficiently accurately for clinical use, says Flinders University ophthalmologist Professor Jamie Craig, NHMRC Senior Practitioner-Fellow and co-author of a series of previous scientific articles outlining the research results, including in prestigious international journal Nature Genetics.
"Our world-leading research represents a step change in the clinical assessment of glaucoma risk. A patient with a high risk (top decile) PRS is 15x more likely to develop glaucoma than a patient at low risk (bottom decile)," says Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor Craig, who continues to work on the project with Flinders University colleague Associate Professor Owen Siggs and others.
"Moreover, a glaucoma patient with a high risk PRS is significantly more likely to develop severe vision loss. Optometrists and ophthalmologists have been lacking tools to assess glaucoma risk, and our PRS has a significant role to play."
