Faculty Information
Name:
Dr. Jinghua Chen
Email
jinghuachen@ufl.edu
Phone
(857) 389-2728
Faculty Department/Division
General Internal Medicine
This project is primarily:
Basic
Research Project Description:
Aim
Gene therapy is a new and exciting treatment for inherited retinal diseases. A major hurdle in most current gene therapy modalities is the ability to transduce target cells at high efficiencies without causing significant inflammation. Our study will focus on designing a magnetic microsphere-mediated gene delivery particle to increase the vector transfection of photoreceptors. If this approach is successful, it could be used to treat many inherited retinal diseases as well as age related macular degeneration.
Background
Inherited retinal degenerations (IRDs) are important causes of blindness that are characterized by progressive dysfunction and death of rod and cone photoreceptor cells leading to vision loss. So far less than 1% of IRD can be treated by a single gene therapy (Luxturna was approved by FDA to treat biallelic RPE65 mutations). There are many clinical trials of gene therapy for IRD targeting on different gene mutations. There are 3 approaches of gene therapy for IRD, subretinal injection, intravitreal injection and suprachoroidal injection. Subretinal injection is the most effective way to deliver vectors so far. Intravitreal injection and suprachoroidal injection are safer and easier but less effective due to the distance from target cells and the tissue barrier. We are going to develop a gene delivery system via AAV attached to magnetic particles to be injected into the vitreous cavity of the eye and be moved into photoreceptor layers via a magnetic field around the eye. If our work demonstrates improved efficacy of gene therapy, the same approach could be translated into IRD patients.
Proposed Work Summary
We are going to use self-complementary AAV5-GFP attached to magnetic particles based on degradable polymers and use it to transfect HEK-293T cells in vitro and compare the result with the transfection with self-complementary AAV5-GFP without magnetic particle coating. We are going to repeat the experiment using cultured retina from C57 black mice.
We expect to see the enhanced transduction of AAV5 into HEK-293T cells and mouse retina in vitra by evaluating with fluorescein microscopy. The new delivery system could potentially be used in future human gene therapies for IRD, and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy (DR).
Statistics: Evaluation of dose-response
T test and Chi square test
Student’s role
Literature search and find the potential beads for magnetic field use
Assist subretinal injection
Assist testing for survival experiments
Assist histology tissue processing
Help with article writing
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No
Laser interferometry compared to visually evoked potentials (sVEP) as a predictor of postoperative visual acuity in patients undergoing cataract surgery
Faculty Information
Name:
Dr. alvaro Mejia-Vergara MD
Email
amejiavergara@ufl.edu
Phone
(786) 782-6383
Faculty Department/Division
Ophthalmology
This project is primarily:
Clinical
Research Project Description:
Cataract is the leading cause of reversible blindness worldwide and its management is surgical. Determining the potential for post-surgery visual acuity is a critical factor in preoperative evaluation. Assessing potential visual acuity is done in order to establish the possible benefit in terms of visual gain with the procedure. In our setting, laser interferometry is the most widely used method to determine this visual potential, however it tends to overestimate or underestimate retinal and neural function depending on the patient’s condition, so its use is limited and its result is not very accurate in some clinical scenarios. On the other hand, sweep visual evoked potentials (sVEPs) are another available, but less used tool that allows an objective assessment of the integrity of the visual pathway, thus generating results in the prediction of visual acuity proportional and in accordance with the patient’s condition.
Objective
To compare the performance of laser interferometry with that of in predicting post-operative of visual acuity in patients undergoing cataract surgery.
Methodology
A prospective cohort study will be conducted in which patients with acquired cataract who will be undergoing cataract surgery at the University of Florida Department of Ophthalmology will be included. All patients will undergo pre-surgery laser interferometry and sVEPs as methods of predicting visual acuity and their results will be compared with the patient’s visual acuity obtained one month after surgery via the Snellen chart. Other systemic and ocular pathologies that may alter the performance of the tests will be documented.
Expected results
Based on the evidence that exists so far, it would be expected that the sVEP will have greater accuracy in patients with dense cataract and concomitant retinal pathologies such as diabetic retinopathy, hypertensive retinopathy, high myopia and age-related macular degeneration.
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No