Just one application is selected by the Sir Jules Thorn Charitable Trust each year to receive the highly competitive Sir Jules Thorn Award. The £1.7m grant supports a five-year programme of translational biomedical research with clear potential to improve health and care for people living with serious long-term or life-limiting conditions.
A team of researchers led by Neeraj Dhaun (Bean) at the Institute for Neuroscience and Cardiovascular Research has received the prestigious Sir Jules Thorn Award for Biomedical Research to develop retinal imaging as a quick and painless way to spot and monitor chronic kidney disease.
Left to Right: Tom MacGillivray, Bean Dhaun and Matt Bailey of INCR, with Miguel Bernabeu of the Usher Institute
Chronic kidney disease
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects around 1 in 10 people worldwide. It can lead to serious problems, including kidney failure and heart disease, and is costly to treat. Doctors monitor CKD using blood and urine tests, but these are not very good at diagnosing early disease or predicting who is most at risk of getting worse.
The Sir Jules Thorn Award will enable a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the Institute for Neuroscience and Cardiovascular Research and the Usher Institute to explore a new solution to this problem – eye scans.
The eye as a window to the kidney
The eye contains tiny blood vessels that closely resemble those in the kidney. Using an eye scan called optical coherence tomography (OCT), the researchers have already found that people with CKD have thinner layers in the retina at the back of their eye. These changes seem to reflect kidney health and even improve when treatment works.
Creating a new tool to improve kidney care
The new breakthrough research bridges discovery science and clinical practice. The team will identify the shared molecular pathways that explain the relationship between the eye and the kidney. By combining advanced imaging with AI, they will apply this understanding to help develop and test a retinal imaging tool for diagnosing and monitoring chronic kidney disease.
Retinal scans like this tell us about more than the eye. People with chronic kidney disease have thinner layers in the retina.
Bean Dhaun, Professor of Nephrology at the Institute for Neuroscience and Cardiovascular Research and lead on this new work, says:
“There is an urgent need to improve early detection of chronic kidney disease and to predict the longer-term outcomes for patients. We are delighted to receive the Sir Jules Thorn Award, which will enable us to investigate retinal imaging as a monitoring tool that could transform the care of patients living with kidney disease.”
The researchers will work in partnership with patients and clinical practitioners to design software for interpreting the retinal measures taken from eye scans. This co-design approach aims to make sure the new tool is not only safe and reliable, but also simple and practical to use in community clinics such as opticians.
Miguel Bernabeu, Professor of Computational Medicine at the Usher Institute adds:
“While AI technology for estimating kidney disease risk from retinal scans has shown potential in research settings, it is now critical to move beyond algorithmic accuracy to develop innovative clinical pathways for its future integration. To fully realise the impact of this technology and encourage its widespread adoption, it is crucial to investigate its value proposition, user experience, and adaptability within the broader sociotechnical ecosystem.”
Ultimately, this work aims to lay a strong foundation for future large-scale clinical trials, which could improve care for patients and offer substantial cost savings for healthcare systems worldwide.
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