A/Prof. Samantha Fraser-Bell is a medical retinal and uveitis specialist. Her expertise is in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the macula and retina, particularly age related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinal vein occlusion and inflammatory eye disease. She is a chief investigator for many clinical medical retinal trials at the Macular Research Unit, at the Save Sight Institute including trials in macular degeneration, diabetic macular oedema and retinal vein occlusion. She is an Associate Professor in the discipline of ophthalmology, University of Sydney, and a consultant Medical Retinal subspecialist at the Royal North Shore and Sydney Eye Hospitals.
After graduating with first class honours from the UNSW Medical School, she completed ophthalmology training at the Sydney Eye Hospital. Her first exposure to ophthalmic research was working with Paul Mitchell in the Blue Mountains Eye Study. This led to her position as a Postgraduate Research Fellow at the Doheny Eye Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA in the area of Age Related Macular Degeneration. For this work, she was awarded a PhD from the University of Sydney.
Having been awarded the Sydney Hospital Alumni and Novartis/RANZCO foundation medical Retinal Scholarships, A/Prof. Fraser-Bell completed Medical Retinal and Uveitis fellowships at Moorfields’ Eye Hospital, London, UK. While in the UK, SFB designed and conducted a randomised controlled trial with retinal specialist, Mr Hykin, which compared Avastin (bevacizumab) to laser in the management of diabetic macular oedema (DMO). Despite its now widespread use in DMO, this was the first published randomised clinical trial of Avastin for DMO.