FAIR Research Award 2022
The FAIR Research Award 2022 in the sum of £20,000 is awarded to Dr Christine Chew for her research project entitled ‘Determining innate and adaptive immune cell interactions within the ocular and joint microenvironment in arthritis-associated uveitis’.
Dr Chew is a NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer at the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol. She is undertaking Paediatric Rheumatology subspecialty training at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children.
The specific condition that Dr Chew is addressing is paediatric uveitis, a chronic sight-threatening eye disease associated with juvenile idiopathic arthritis which is difficult to diagnose and challenging to treat.
Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is the most common childhood rheumatic condition. Approximately a third of children with JIA develop uveitis, a sight-threatening condition which can lead to irreversible blindness. Joint disease typically precedes eye involvement, which usually presents silently.
The risk of lifelong visual burden in additional to joint inflammation is especially significant in JIA-associated uveitis given the younger age of onset. Yet there is limited understanding in the disease prevention and cure. In order to develop personalised treatment for JIA-associated uveitis, there remains a crucial and unanswered questions – ‘What are the shared immune processes within the eye and joint that drive inflammation in JIA uveitis?’. The eye and joint are often studied separately but the immune responses in JIA uveitis are closely linked. Dr Chew aims to measure key gene and protein expression of the immune system in the eye and joint. The resultant information will be linked to existing gene and clinical datasets to determine potential blood biomarkers to predict disease onset and treatment response
Dr Chew’s research offers a unique opportunity to study, for the first time, immune pathways in both the ocular and joint niche from patients with JIA-associated uveitis. The project is expected to support the development of future therapeutic targets for rheumatic disease in children and young adults.
Dr Chew’s application was supported by:
Professor Andrew Dick, Professor of Ophthalmology, Bristol Medical School;
Professor Ramanan, Consultant Paediatric Rheumatologist at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children
Dr Gareth Jones, Senior Lecturer in Immunology at the University of Bristol.
Dr Chew’s project will continue over a period of 2 years.