Lyndon da Cruz

Professor da Cruz is consultant retinal surgeon and head of department of vitreoretinal surgery at Moorfields Eye Hospital; Professor of Retinal and Stem Cell Transplantation, UCL; Hon. Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Kings College, London. He completed his PhD in retinal gene therapy at the University of Western Australia on an NHMRC medical Scholarship, his post-doc fellowship on the Royal Society Howard Florey fellowship and was named the Menzies scholar for Australia in 2000. He has worked in innovative research for the treatment of blinding retinal conditions since 1990 including implanting the first prosthetic retina (bionic eye) in Britain (2008) and the first-in-man delivery of a stem cell derived retinal pigment epithelial sheet for macular degeneration that he has co-developed (2015). For his research he has been awarded the Ruskell Medal by the Worshipful company of Spectacle Makers (2018); The Alan Alderman award from the Macular disease Society (2018); The Denuncio medal from The Society of Ophthalmic Professors, Italy (2016); The Harold Ridley Medal, The Ridley Foundation (2014); The Gulstrand Medal from the Swedish National Ophthalmic Society (2010). Professor da Cruz cofounded The London Project, to create new stem cell treatments for blinding retinal conditions. The project realises the need for large scale multidisciplinary teams of stem cell scientists, surgeons and engineers to solve the problems of tissue manufacture, understanding of disease treatment points and reliable delivery of the therapeutic element. He has established a robotic engineering group at Kings College London with Dr Christos Bergelas to create robotic delivery systems for novel biological treatments in the retina.