Annie Macauley
Annie Macauley
My name is Annie Macauley I work at the Centre for Eye Research Australia. The title of my PhD is: “Biomarkers in diabetic retinopathy: investigations of transcriptenomic and epigenetic disease modifiers in relation to diabetic retinopathy."
What is diabetic retinopathy?
So it’s when people are going blind when they have diabetes. They start losing vision because of bleeding at the back of their eye and all sorts of degradation happening in the retina.
Well there would be a change in a person who has developed complications with their vision. It’s going to have an effect on their cell structure. It might have an effect to do with their insulin or their glucose or their hormones. But even before that happens, there will be effects happening in what’s copied in your DNA. It’s those initial copies before the disease progresses that we want to be able to identify and to identify those people early as having the disease.
Why is it important?
I believe it will be important because I am hoping to be able to create a clinical tool that we’ll be able to use that is fairly inexpensive to run, non-invasive, because it’ll be a simple blood test and it will be able to be used frequently, so we will be able to pick up people developing eye complications that have diabetes and not those particularly who have come into the hospital, but at the level of the GP and identify those people in the community that are most at risk and get them in quickly. I think that with the increasing amount of people in the community with diabetes, that we really need to act on this fast, because it could go out of proportion with the number of people on backlog who need to be assessed for their eyes.
What will be the outcome for the patient?
The outcome for the patient will be simple. They will be able to go to the GP and have a simple blood test. As part of that normal blood test they’ll be able to assess their risk factor. If they’re getting complications for eye from their diabetes, that comes back. They go back to see their GP and they say: “You’re at risk for this. That’s OK, we’ve got it early and we’ll just send it off to the hospital so that they can get treatment for their eyes.”
I’m in my first year. I’m about to start in a month and a half. Initially, it’ll be collecting samples. We have lots of participants coming in as part of a diabetes management project. I’m collecting their blood samples and processing them so that I can keep them stored and then eventually I’ll be processing the genes and the gene-environment interaction in their plasma.
Recruitment of study participants
We’re recruiting them from the eye and ear hospital at the moment so that we can identify those with different level of severity of these eye complications in people with diabetes. At the moment we have about 100 to 150 that are recruited, that I have already obtained their samples and I’ll be looking at obtaining another 500 at least.
Has it been difficult to recruit?
Not really. Most people are pretty willing because we talk to them honestly and say what the project is about and hopefully anything we find from this will help future generations. Most of them really want to understand or want their children to understand their diabetes better, so that they’re willing to participate and are willing to give their time, which is wonderful.
Motivation
I love research. My motivation would be that I started to work here at the Eye and Ear Hospital in the Centre for Eye Research Australia and that I have been able to work under some fantastic researchers. And I had such a passion for research before and really found that I had access to a whole vault of knowledge and tools that were available and got to spend a lot of time developing a question that I wanted to ask that was missing in the research.
Path to a PhD
I initially started to enquire about doing a PhD. I’d been working at the Centre for Eye Research Australia for a year and a half. I worked as an RA and then became a coordinator in the genetic field. I had worked previously in research for three years beforehand, working in laboratories in genetic research. I decided that I really wanted to do a PhD, but felt I needed to be in the right place, have the right environment, a topic that I was passionate about and a really good team to work with. When I found all those things and everything came together, I decided that this was the time; time to do a PhD.
Choosing a topic..
I guess my passion would be, because I’m coming from more of a basic science background, my passion would be more in the genetics area and in biochemistry and I’ve always worked in research in ocular-related fields, so I think that the retina is one of those wonderful tissues to work with because it’s neural, yet it’s so prominent in our vision .. and in our everyday life, that I thought that it is something that is really critical to work on. In terms of the genetic component, I felt passionate about going into more the environmental genetic effect.
I wanted to focus on something that was common and that you’d be able to identify a particular kind of disease in a big large community and make it accessible to a community. So that was my main focus and passion around that.
Choosing a team..
A team is so important. I think, first of all, saying that you’re going to do a PhD as part of a team is a big step because a PhD is not something that you go alone. I think it’s something where you’ve got this big support network underneath so you don’t feel like you’re going to collapse or that one mistake is going to be the end of everything. And finally when you find out that you need to work in a team, finding people that you get along with, that you can communicate with - they don’t have to be your best friends, but they have to be people who will inform you of what’s going on with them and then you can tell them what’s going on and have a really good feedback. Being able to sit together and have big thought sessions, where you come out with ideas and feel free to talk about things is really important. And that kind of support and continued support: I think it’s fundamental to doing a good PhD.
Yes, I’d like a career in academic research. I think that that’s where I’m happy... I like coming up with new ideas, I like to be free to think outside the box. I think in a tech situation or a clinical situation I find that I always find things that I think should be done better, or differently, or anything like that. Being in a research situation, means that you actually get the chance to make a difference, to investigate and go where no one has gone before. I like that.
Beyond the PhD, I think that the direction I could head in could be varied. I think that there are so many possible areas that I could head in in the future that I think that I really want to assess where my strengths lie and then let that carry through. But no matter what, I know that I want to carry on past the PhD and to use that PhD as a tool to offset my career.
Role Models
Yes, I would say a big inspiration for me has been Tien Wong. I’ve worked under him in the Retinal Vascular Unit. We’ve set up the ocular imaging centre and part of what I’ve done here is the retinal grading and developing new programs with him. And his energy and his enthusiasm for research – it really just inspires me that, you know, that you just keep going. You keep on trying to break down barriers, but not always with huge steps. You take the little ones but make sure that you do it properly and make sure that it is actually going to be used in an actual clinical setting and not just in the cupboard.
Hopes..
I’m hoping to keep a level head. I’m hoping to come out of it and to be as passionate as I am right now. I’m hoping to develop a huge skill set. I have a large skill set going in but there can be so much more that I could expand upon even though I can’t think of what it might be right now. I’m really hoping to come out with the tools for the future to go on and do really good research.
Fears..
Losing sleep, staying up late nights, writing papers and everything! I think they’re more worries. I’m not too fearful about them. No, I don’t think I’m too worried here. I feel pretty supported, which is great.