Join Billy Morton (OX 2017) in the race against blindness and support research to find the cure against inherited retinal disease.
Wednesday, 6 October 2021
I am an Old Xav from the Class of 2017 and have been a part of the story for The Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA) for this year's Giving Day.

I live with a rare genetic eye disease known as Choroideremia which causes progressive vision loss. Choroideremia, which usually affects young men, often starts with night blindness in childhood or the teen years, followed by a progressive loss of peripheral vision throughout adulthood which eventually results in tunnel vision – and sometimes, as people get older, full loss of central vision.

Click here to read the full story.

Currently, there is no treatment or cure for Choroideremia.

However, current gene therapy research is giving myself and others around the world with inherited retinal disease hope. 


The Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA) is an independent Medical Research Institute, deeply committed to conducting eye research with real-life impact and finding ways to prevent people from going blind.  

As an international leader in eye research, CERA uses world-class knowledge and expertise to achieve better treatments and faster diagnosis of eye disease.
Encouraging advances in the lab and clinical trials have put scientists at CERA on the brink of discovering new treatments that could slow vision loss – or even restore sight.  A breakthrough in research could be life changing for those who have inherited retinal eye diseases such as choroideremia, retinitis pigmentosa or Stargardt’s disease. 

Donations will support Dr Raymond Wong who is developing a gene therapy to ‘switch on sight’ by regenerating vision sensing photoreceptor cells.