Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

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.