Dr Lim received an award for her short oral presentation during paris Redox 2015

According her study, Dr Julie Lim explained: "With advancing age, oxidative stress results in redox imbalance and eye diseases which threaten the sight of the elderly. It is our hypothesis that the cystine/glutamate antiporter (CGAP) controls redox balance in the front of the eye by maintaining the cysteine to cystine concentration ratio. The generation of knockout mice which are deficient in xCT, the light chain subunit of CGAP that confers substrate specificity, has confirmed a role for CGAP in maintaining plasma cystine/cysteine redox balance in vivo. In this mouse, at 8 weeks of age, the absence of xCT results in significantly higher plasma cystine concentrations relative to cysteine, indicating that ageing may be accelerated in these mice. To test this, we have utilised these mice and conducted a series of clinical, biochemical and molecular assessments to determine the effects of global redox imbalance on ocular function. Our results indicate that mice lacking xCT are more susceptible to oxidative stress and the earlier onset of ocular pathologies. This mouse model will serve as an invaluable tool in the development and testing of intervention therapies targeted at restoring cysteine/cystine redox balance and thus delaying the onset of oxidative stress induced eye diseases.