Universitat de València will use optical technology –up to now only used in astronomy to study images of the universe- in order to prevent myopia, which is considered the most common eye disease in the world. The full professor of optics Robert Montés Micó has achieved one of the prestigious projects of the European Research Council, worth a million and a half Euros, to study the signs of the processes generating myopia.
The Starting Research Grant projects are awarded to senior researchers who are working in projects likely to change the current science. In this case, the results could affect one of the most popular problems of the public health.
The project’s goal is to identify the signs that control the accommodative processes produced when the human eye receives images in the retina. According to Montés ‘we will be able to modify them in order to control the growing suffered by the eye avoiding, for example, alterations of its axial lengt, which is the case of myopia.’
The project will use visual simulation using an adaptative optical technology, which is usually used in astronomy, for the study of the human eye. After that, ‘we hope to have the tools to modify the signs which control the eye accommodative processes. All this with the goal of stopping the myopia processes, especially in children’, the expert says.
HEALING AS AN OBJECTIVE
Up to now, there was no effective therapy for this, since the myopia operations avoid using glasses or contact lenses but do not end with the disease. For this reason, the project ‘will allow to move forward in the myopia’s treatment and prevent its process creating glasses or contact lenses which will stop the disease or its process. It will also provide updated information on its cases rate in Europe’ the researcher explains.
Robert Montés Micó has a PhD in optometry and neuroscience by the Science and Technology Institute of Manchester. He carries out his research on the accommodation, presbyopia and myopia fields. He was nationally accredited when he was only 34 years old. Nowadays, he heads a research group of 20 researchers. His research has contributed to disclose the changes of the human eye due to age, among other things.
SIX MILLIONS OF EUROS IN TWO YEARS
The project of the European Research Council achieved by this professor is the fourth in the modality of IDEAS of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union. Universitat the València then has achieved four projects of this kind in the last two years, three led by the its lecturers and researchers and one led by a researcher of the Ramon y Cajal programme. All these projects amount 6 million Euros and will be developed from 2010 to 2017.
More information:
www.uv.es/gio
www.uv.es/cdciencia
Last update: 18 de september de 2012 08:09.
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