Jane Caroline Sowden is a British biologist who is Professor of Developmental Biology and Genetics at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust. Her research investigates eye formation and repair by developing a better understanding the genetic pathways that regulate

eye development Eye formation in the human embryo begins at approximately three weeks into embryonic development and continues through the tenth week.Ort, D., David, H."Development of the Eye" Retrieved 22 April 2015. Cells from both the mesodermal and the ecto ...

Early life and education

Sowden was an undergraduate in biochemistry at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. She moved to

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

for her doctorate where she studied the carbonic anhydrase I gene.

Research and career

After her PhD, Sowden moved to the Medical Research Council (MRC) human biochemical genetics unit. She was awarded a career development award in 1996, and spent four years working on retinal development at the Institute of Ophthalmology. Sowden established the eye development and repair research group at

Great Ormond Street Hospital Great Ormond Street Hospital (informally GOSH or Great Ormond Street, formerly the Hospital for Sick Children) is a children's hospital located in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, and a part of Great Ormond Street Hospital ...

. She looks to understand the genetic pathways that underpin eye development. She is interested in how these pathways are disrupted in patients with eye disease. To explore these pathways, Sowden uses

DNA sampling DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. The ...

. Childhood blindness can involve structural malformations, which occur due do disruption of biological processes. The eye globe develops before birth from the embryonic optic cup. Mutations of the

CHX10 Visual system homeobox 2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''VSX2'' gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ' ...

gene can cause non-syndromic

microphthalmia Microphthalmia (Greek: grc, μικρός, mikros, small, label=none, grc, ὀφθαλμός, ophthalmos, eye, label=none, also referred as microphthalmos, is a developmental disorder of the eye in which one (unilateral microphthalmia) or both ( ...

. By studying mice with

mutations Sowden looks to identify the molecular pathways that regulate relevant retinal progenitor cells. These cells undergo a number of cell divisions before producing all retinal neurons. Sowden has explored whether stem cells can be used to repair diseased retinal neurons during retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa. She has explored whether the ciliary epithelium can be used to generate progenitor cells for photoreceptors. She has shown that the developing retina contains a population of rod photoreceptor precursor cells, which can be transplanted into a diseased retina to restore vision. Her former doctoral students include Adam Rutherford.

Selected publications

Her publications include: * ''Restoration of vision after transplantation of photoreceptors'' * ''Retinal repair by transplantation of photoreceptor precursors'' * ''Fox's in development and disease'' * ''Photoreceptor precursors derived from three-dimensional embryonic stem cell cultures integrate and mature within adult degenerate retina''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sowden, Jane Living people Alumni of University College London Alumni of the University of Oxford Academics of the University of Oxford 21st-century British biologists British women scientists Year of birth missing (living people)