Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects

The cornea is the outer window to the eye that transmits light to the retina for vision.*Permanent transparency loss, due to disease or damage, can result in vision loss and*blindness. Transplantation of human donor corneas is the only widely accepted treatment, but*it is overshadowed by a worldwide shortage (only 1 donor cornea available for every 70*needed) and functional limitations (sub-optimal optical results, rejection, and graft failure),*particularly in very sick eyes with inflammation and infection.*Our goals are (1) to overcome the donor shortage and to improve surgical outcomes by*developing biosynthetic alternatives to donor corneas, and (2) to revolutionize cornea surgical*methods so that patients can be treated by removing only the damaged tissue and filling the*resulting tissue gap with a transparent, injectable hydrogel that will be polymerized in situ*instead of a full transplantation, somewhat like dental fillings.*In regenerative medicine, biomaterials are used as scaffolds to promote tissue repair. Our*approach consists in designing collagen mimics at the nanoscale level and allowing these to*self-assemble into full size 3-D scaffolds after injection into the diseased cornea. We will then*use light to start the crosslinking reaction, to form a stable, transparent graft.*Our proposed new treatment comprising of a new surgical paradigm and new biomaterials will*offer a minimally invasive and unequaled alternative for sight restoration. Our approach will*have a tremendous impact in patients who currently have very poor prognosis with traditional*corneal transplantation.