Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Pharmacological treatments are available for wet Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness. In contrast, there is currently no effective treatment for many other irreversible vision robbing diseases, such as dry AMD and glaucoma. The delivery of therapeutic agents to the afflicted cells of the retina is hampered by their location at the back of the eye. In order to get treatments to the retina, the protective features of the eye must be overcome. Nanoparticles are versatile vehicles for delivery of therapeutics to the retina, but often have low uptake in the desired cell layers. The purpose of this proposal is to investigate novel two photon laser based procedures to increase the uptake of treatments injected into the eye into the relevant cells of the retina. Specifically, we propose to use a focused beam of femtosecond pulsed light to increase the permeability of selectively targeted cells to nanoparticles. We will use Optical Coherence Tomography, which provides cross-sectional images of retina, to guide the positioning of the focused beam of light on the desired retinal cell layer. The requested equipment is a femtosecond laser with broad spectral bandwidth that can be used for simultaneous OCT and optoporation research in the retina.