New Chancellor's Fellow joining CIR

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CIR welcomes our newest Principal Investigator Dr Chloe Stanton who has been awarded one of the University of Edinburgh’s Chancellor's Fellowships.  

Established in 2014, Chancellor’s Fellowships are five-year tenure track positions that invest in researchers delivering cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and innovation. They are designed to help the most promising academics advance from the early stages of their career to more senior roles, and to empower their ground-breaking research. 

They are for academics with a vision for future leadership in research and innovation, which may straddle leading a major area of research, forging new industry partnerships, or implementing research-led teaching innovations. 

Dr Stanton is one of 3 Chancellor's Fellows joining the Institute for Regeneration and Repair. Dr Güneş Taylor is joining the Centre for Reproductive Health, and Dr Stefano Comazzetto is joining the Centre for Regenerative Medicine.

Sight loss in later life has a profound impact on affected individuals, their families and, in an aging population, upon society. Dr Stanton will investigate common and rare forms of age-related retinal degeneration to identify genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying cellular dysfunction in the retina and may be targets for future therapy. Spanning basic and translational science and with strong links to clinical research, this work will improve understanding of disease initiation and progression in age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and late-onset retinal degeneration (L-ORD) and advance novel therapeutic strategies for prevention, regeneration or repair.

With over 2 million people in the UK living with sight loss, the development of novel therapies for rare and common inherited retinal diseases is a strategic priority for future health. During my Chancellor's Fellowship, I am excited to contribute new insights into genomic causes and mechanisms of retinal cell dysfunction and advance new treatment options. 

Chloe Stanton

Dr Chloe Stanton received her BSc degree in Biochemistry from the University of Leeds. Following time spent working as a research technician in an Alzheimer's genetics lab (Professor Steven G. Younkin, Mayo Clinic, Florida) and a molecular biology lab (Professor E. Peter Geiduschek, University of California San Diego, California), she moved to Edinburgh for her PhD (University of Edinburgh, 2012) with Professor Alan Wright. Here, she began studying the genetic and molecular mechanisms of age-related macular degeneration. During her post-doctoral work with Dr Veronique Vitart, she performed functional studies of quantitative traits, including glycosylation of IgG antibodies and corneal thickness, that influence human health. During this time, she became interested in rare genetic eye diseases, developing the first model of Brittle Cornea Syndrome and identifying allelic heterogeneity in late-onset retinal degeneration.

As a Chancellor’s Fellow at the Centre for Inflammation Research at the University of Edinburgh Institute of Regeneration and Repair, Chloe’s lab will investigate common and rare forms of age-related retinal degeneration to identify the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying cellular dysfunction in the retina and targets for future therapy. She is a member of the Robert O. Curle Eye Lab, a multidisciplinary academic community focused on devising new diagnostics and treatments for blinding eye diseases and collaborates closely with clinical colleagues in Edinburgh and more widely. Chloe is PI for the Scottish AMD cohort in the International AMD Genomics Consortium and Treasurer for the UK Eye Genetics Group (UK-EGG).

Chloe is a highly talented scientist who brings a wealth of experience in eye disease. In IRR she will combine her interests in the genetic of age related macular degeneration and the roles of inflammatory processes in the eye. In doing this she can draw upon the population of inflammation scientists in CIR and expand the range of diseases and tissues we study, aligning with other colleagues studying the eye.

David Dockrell