>> Research Projects >> Eye Regeneration

1. Tissue-engineered Intraocular Delivery Device

Declination or loss of sensory functions due to aging, damaging, or pathological process in the visual system often results in the disabilities in independence, communication, and lifestyle. Current therapy to treat these conditions including retinal degeneration (age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma), vascular eye disorders (wet-form of age-related macular degeneration, proliferative diabetic retinopathy, and choroidal neovascularization), acute and chronic intraocular inflammation, and so on, requires multiple intraocular delivery of therapeutic agents. So far, sustained delivery with unlimited temporal profile that is necessary for long-lasting therapeutic effects has not been achieved. In most of the cases, repeated injections or loading of the agents are performed to maintain the local concentration of the agents in the damaged eye. These procedures significantly decrease the patients' compliance and increase the risks of cataract, retinal detachment, vitreous homorrhage, and endophthalmitis. More recently, the emergence of slow-release delivery strategies utilizing degradable polymer carriers and liposomes, offers new hope for the treatment and manipulation of visual damages and diseases. However, many problems persist with these approaches including uneven delivery profile, limited temporal delivery profile, and difficulty with retrieval when necessary. Our ultimate goal is to achieve uniform, retrievable, sustained agent delivery with unlimited temporal profile to the intraocular cavity for sensory function restoration and prevention of visual functional loss. To this end, we have designed a miniature re-accessible sustained delivery device (Patent pending) for controlled sustained release of active compounds. We are using secondary degeneration animal models, such as a PDE6B-deficient rcd1 canine model of retinitis pigmentosa or optical nerve crush injury model to test our newly developed devices.

2. Honeycomb Scaffolds for Retina Tissue Engineering

We are using our newly developed laser microfabrication facility and highly elastic, bioactive, and degradable polymers to form a 3-D thin layer of honeycomb structure shown below as supporting substrates for retina tissue engineering. This is a new area of regenerative medicine and not well studied in the past.