Author Spotlight: Modeling Retinal Pathologies with Enhanced RPE Cell-Based Disease Models

We engineer disease models to mimic aspects of retinal pathologies. With these models, we can better understand the role of RPE cells in diseases based on their response to physical changes, like when strain occurs on the monolayer or a brex membrane thickens with age. One of the biggest challenges is having a representative cell type.

Compared to the commonly used immortalized cell line, the primary cells isolated with this technique make our disease models more realistic to what happens in our eyes. This technique provides us with a method of obtaining high quality cells without requiring extensive differentiation times. Furthermore, we use resources that are commonly available to research labs, which makes it more cost effective.

Moving forward, we want to look at how natural changes that happen in your eyes during aging, may lead to the early stages of AMD. We want to better understand those changes so we can identify specific treatment targets.