Cell Rescue/Replacement Therapy

Photoreceptor degeneration is often a cause of blinding diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP) or age-related macular degeneration (AMD).Retinitis pigmentosa affects approximately one in 3,500 people and age-related macular degeneration affects as many as one out of three elderly by the age of 75.

There is no effective therapy for these diseases. An effort to rescue photoreceptors and preserve vision has been a major focus in vision research.Our goal is to obtain the optimal conditions and surface to culture rat photoreceptors.The challenge is to maintain the functional and structural characteristics in vivo of cells.We will use surface modification and/or microchannel pattern techniques to maintain the structure of photoreceptors.A comparison of the cultured photoreceptors will be made to the in vivo system to verify effectiveness of our method.

The long-term goal of this project is to implant cultured photoreceptor cells into an in vivo system and investigate the efficacy of the therapy to rescue or replace the degenerated photoreceptors.