A medical illustration showing the location of the macula

Macular Degeneration

Discovering the potential use of therapeutic stem cells to reverse Age-related Macular Degeneration (loss of vision caused by aging). Developing nanomaterial tracers to track the effectiveness and health of these stem cells.

There is currently no cure or effective treatment for the 10 million visually impaired or blind patients affected by Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). Although there is no clinically approved treatment in the United States that would restore vision to the eye, some drugs, such as Lucentis, may be able to slow or improve vision loss. Other treatments include laser treatment or implantable telescopes. However, most treatment methods are performed with patients who have the wet form of AMD.

Consequently, there is a significant need for alternative therapeutic strategies. Most recently, cell transplantation has also been shown to rescue rod and cone photoreceptors and minimize the loss of behaviorally measured thresholds for up to 8 months in some cases. These transplanted therapeutic cells into the subretinal space of rodents and non-human primates have become a well-established method for evaluating potential treatments. These cells have been shown to survive throughout the course of the short-term study with no adverse effects on host retinal function using multifocal electroretinography. Specific information regarding cell survival, migration, and integration in the host is primarily derived from post-mortem histological assessments. The serial nature of this method requires large numbers of animals for these studies at multiple time points since there is currently no method for evaluating these efficacious cell-based therapies longitudinally in vivo. Consequently, the development of technology to visually track the transplanted cells survival and migration in vivo is of significant interest. Here, we develop cell-labeling agents to track these cells.

A medical infographic showing how the progression from dry age-related macular degeneration to the wet form. — **Accessible Text:** Cross-section of the macula and underlying blood vessels that nourish it. Although it is unknown what causes AMD, increased *Drusen* (deposits in the macula) and *VEGF* (vascular endothelial growth factor) are correlated with dry AMD. As dry AMD progresses into wet AMD, abnormal blood vessels grow into the back of the eye, damaging the macula.

Related Publications

Increasing the Efficacy of Gold Nanorod Uptake in Stem Cell-Derived Therapeutic Cells: Implications for Stem Cell Labeling and Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging. ACS Applied Nano Materials. 2022.