Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Retinal degenerative diseases can be devastating, as they can take away one's primary ability to interact with the world around them. The most common of these diseases is age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which affects nearly 600,000 Canadians and over 14 million people worldwide, with these figures continuing to rise given our aging population and increasing life-spans. Though remarkable progress has been made in the treatment of 'wet' AMD, the other 'dry' form, which accounts for over 90% of all AMD, has no effective treatment and there is little-to-no understanding of its underlying cause. In many retinal degenerative diseases, photoreceptors atrophy and then die off, while the neighboring network of neurons that mediate the passage of visual signals to the brain remain largely intact. In light of this, scientists have attempted to use stem cells to regenerate these photoreceptors, as stem cells have the unique ability to differentiate into any desired cell type when treated with the correct growth factors. Unfortunately, preclinical trials using stem-cell derived photoreceptor precursor cells (PPCs) to regenerate the retina have resulted in too few cells staying at the desired site in the retina, and those that remain rarely integrate - form connections with downstream neurons. The problem is that PPCs are dispersing from where they are needed most, and the majority of those that remain fail to live long enough to form synapses. To address this, I propose to utilize novel materials that gel once inside the eye as a vehicle for PPCs, thereby retaining them at the site of injection. I also propose to harness the neuroprotective effects of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) by co-injecting them with PPCs, which should increase PPC survival, while the addition of synapse-promoting factors should lead to greater integration. My research will help lead to an effective therapy that restores the sight of the many Canadians suffering from advance retinal degeneration.