Andrew White

Biography

 Andrew White B.Med.Sci(hons) MBBS PhD FRANZCO is a clinician scientist ophthalmologist at Westmead Hospital. His subspecialty interest is glaucoma. He was awarded First Class Honours in Medical Science in 1995 and a combined MBBS/PhD degree in 2001 from the University of Sydney. He also undertook research work at the Max Plank Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, Germany and the State University of New York (SUNY). This research focused on the characterisation of the koniocellular visual pathway, responsible for blue yellow colour vision as well as the physiology behind colour vision and glaucoma detection tests such as FDT. Trained at the Sydney Eye Hospital, he undertook subspecialty training in glaucoma at Westmead Hospital in Sydney and Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, UK. In 2011, Andrew was promoted to the post of Consultant Ophthalmologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Senior Lecturer in Ophthalmology at the University of Cambridge. Throughout his time in the UK, Andrew undertook research at the Centre for Brain Repair, University of Cambridge. He has recently been looking at neuroprotective agents to prevent the progression of glaucoma in vitro/ex vivo. He has been invited to speak at glaucoma and ophthalmology conferences in the UK, Europe, Asia and Australasia. He has been on the organising committee for several international ophthalmology conferences. He is also actively involved in the training of medical students, registrars and fellows in cataract and glaucoma. He is a Clinical Senior Lecturer and has research affiliations with the University of Sydney at both the Save Sight Institute and Westmead Millenium Institute. He is a reviewer for the Journal of Glaucoma, Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology and Translational Vision Science and Technology. Andrew is a member of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), European Glaucoma Society, Australian and New Zealand Glaucoma Interest Group (ANZGIG). He is the current chair of the Glaucoma Australia Expert Advisory Panel

Research Interest

  As a clinician scientist, my research interests focus on the patient. My clinical interest as an ophthalmologist is glaucoma. Ultimately I am interested in research that will have concrete benefit to the patient, whether it be by developing a potential new treatments or by the clinical study of disease progression and how that is modified by treatment. Glaucoma is the leading of irreversible blindness in the world. The condition involves progressive death of retinal ganglion cells (RGC) in the eye resulting in irreversible visual loss. We don’t truly understand how or why this happens. Recent evidence suggests that neuronal death in glaucoma has common mechanisms with other neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Thus, advances in our understanding of glaucoma may have implications for other brain diseases and we can learn and translate breakthrough findings from those related research fields to glaucoma research. My Current research Interests are diverse Neuroprotection We now have effective treatments that can dramatically slow the progress of glaucoma by lowering eye pressure. Elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) is by far the most important risk factor for the development and progression of glaucoma. IOP-lowering treatment is therefore the current mainstay of glaucoma treatment. However, some patients with glaucoma worsen and go blind despite maximal IOP reduction. At present, there is no available treatment that can restore visual function once the damage has been done. We need understand better the mechanisms of RGC death in glaucoma, to develop methods to protect these cells, thus slowing the progression of glaucomatous visual loss. We need to be able to do this before we can focus on restoration of vision that has been lost. With overseas collaborators, we have developed a novel laboratory model of glaucoma that has proven to be very useful in the investigation of glaucoma pathogenesis. Using this model, we have demonstrated potentially important changes in RGC metabolism that may be able to be targeted in potential new treatments for glaucoma. Potentially already existing drugs such as common antihypertensives may be able to target this pathway. This work continues through my affiliations with Westmead Millenium Institute and the Save Sight Institute as well as a longstanding collaboration with the Centre for Brain Repair, University of Cambridge.