View Annual Report 2012 - University of Illinois College of Medicine ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

8 INNOvAtIONS CLINICAL STUDIES OPEN WAy FOR New treatment for retinal disease Drug discovery efforts within the Retina Chemical Genomics Lab, directed by Michael Grassi, MD, Assistant Professor, recently accelerated. In work published earlier this year in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (doi: 10.1167/ iovs.11-8928), Qing Chang, MD, PhD, Research Assistant Professor, and Dr. Grassi developed a cell-based model for retinal degenerative key pathways that are responsible for cell death in photoreceptors, the light-sensing cells of the retina. This model has subsequently been leveraged by Dr. Chang and Dr. Grassi to screen a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved compound library of more than 1,000 compounds to identify new treatments for retinal disease. Work is underway to better define the mechanism of action for a novel compound identified in this screen, which could potentially represent a new treatment for retinal disease. “For those individuals suffering from retinal disease, these studies reveal the exciting advantages of high-throughput screening platforms, which are accelerating our ability to introduce new treatments in the clinic,” states Dr. Grassi. Michael Grassi, MD testing efficacy of donated corneas The Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary is among the sites participating in the Cornea Preservation Time Study (CPTS), a $12.3 million study to determine whether the supply of donated corneas can meet anticipated growth in demand over the next 20 to 30 years. Elmer Tu, MD, Associate Professor and Director of the Cornea Service, serves as site director of the study, which will determine whether corneas transplanted up to two weeks after donor death work as well as corneas transplanted up to one week after donor death. The growth of the U.S. population which accounts for the majority of corneal transplants — patients 50 and older — is projected to increase from about 99 million in 2010 to about 133 million by 2030, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Many cornea transplant specialists are concerned about an adequate supply of donated corneas. One approach to solving the projected increase is to prove that donated corneas up to two weeks old achieve the same outcomes for patients as those that are transplanted a week after donor death. According to Dr. Tu, most cornea surgeons use corneas up to one week after the death of the donor, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration permits corneas to be stored in preservation medium at refrigerator temperature up to two weeks after donor death. Corneas older than two weeks are used overseas for transplants without significant problems reported, he adds. “We want to see if the length of time the donor cornea is kept in the preservation liquid before the transplant affects the likelihood of the transplant being successful.” Participants will be followed for three years after transplant to see if there are differences in transplant success or in the number of transplanted endothelial cells (the layers of cells that line the undersurface of the cornea) on the corneas that were preserved for seven days or less compared to those
NeW treAtMeNtS Elmer Tu, MD Yannek Leiderman, MD, PhD preserved between eight and 14 days. “There is no reason to believe there is any greater risk for transplant failure with either preservation time group,” Dr. Tu said. The study is headed by Jonathan Lass, MD, Chair of the Case Western Reserve Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences. Building biomarker database Yannek Leiderman, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor and Director of the Vitreoretinal Microsurgery Laboratory, is implementing a system of large-scale sample collection, including storage of whole blood, DNA, RNA, plasma and serum, as well as a clinical database that will be utilized to investigate the relationship of biomarkers with health and diabetic retinopathy status and progression. One Vision 2012 9 The project is in collaboration with a major effort by Joe G.N. “Skip” Garcia, MD, Vice President for Health Affairs at the University of Illinois, to build a broad range of biomarkers for disease. The UI BioBank will provide a database for the correlation of clinical samples with phenotypic data for the purpose of investigative analyses and to provide access to study data for future protocols and investigations. The patient cohort for Dr. Leiderman’s study includes outpatients in the Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary who have diabetes or conditions associated with proliferative retinopathies and patients that have opted to participate in the UI BioBank and have undergone blood collection in the course of their clinical care. He and research colleague Bin Liu, PhD, are coordinating sample collection with the Retina Service physicians.
Page 1 and 2: Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary UIC
Page 3 and 4: Rohit Varma, MD, MPH Clinical Fello
Page 5 and 6: COrNeAL SteM CeLLS Transplants open
Page 7 and 8: ArtIfICIAL COrNeA Complicated cases
Page 9: AMD treAtMeNt Novel drug delivery c
Page 13 and 14: Left to right: Samuel Lee, MD, Joan
Page 15 and 16: TYLER BURRESS: BACk IN the gAMe On
Page 17 and 18: Mary Karakourtis Panton would often
Page 19 and 20: WhY I gIve Chuck Barsky donates on
Page 21 and 22: Mrs. Marie J. Bugajski Dr. Michael
Page 23 and 24: EndowEd chairs B.A. Field Chair of
Page 25 and 26: Dingcai Cao, PhD Associate Professo
Page 27 and 28: fACULtY pUBLICAtIONS Illinois Eye a
Page 29 and 30: Gowrisankaran S, Alexander KR. Stim
Page 31 and 32: in a population based study: The Lo
Page 33 and 34: Corporation. First published in 199
Page 35 and 36: Rha J, Genead MA, Godara P,Williams
Page 37 and 38: foundation sPonsorEd rEsEarch inVeS
Page 39 and 40: oCuloPlaStiC SurGerY Vinay Aakalu,
Page 41 and 42: Clinical Fellows Cornea Scott Kelly
Page 43 and 44: Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary Resi

View Annual Report 2012 - University of Illinois College of Medicine ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?