Volume 13, Number 1, 2004
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded two grants totaling $3.1 million to researchers in the College of Engineering for their work on the detection of early-stage cataracts and for the engineering of novel drug delivery systems.
The first of these interdisciplinary projects got its start when John F. Rabolt, Karl W. and Renate Böer Professor and chairperson of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, had a routine eye exam a couple of years ago. When the doctor told him he had the beginnings of cataracts that might require surgery in several years, Rabolt says he asked why his previous exams hadn't picked up on the problem.
"The doctor told me that cataracts have to grow to a certain size before they can be seen," Rabolt says. "I started to think that there must be a way to detect them earlier."
He already was conducting research with a device he and a group of colleagues developed called a planar array infrared (PA-IR) spectrograph, with the goal of making the instrument smaller and more portable. One of the applications they saw for the device was in homeland security, as a portable detection platform that could provide real-time recognition of chemical and biological weapons.
But, Rabolt says, once he started thinking about cataract formation, he began considering additional applications of the PA-IR spectrograph in the area of human health.
"If this could be used to detect early-stage cataracts, and it was small and portable, every ophthalmologist's office could have one of these instruments," he says. "And, if we can figure out a way to detect cataracts five or 10 years earlier than we can now, then someone else will come up with ways to treat them earlier and stop or slow down their growth."
Isabelle Pelletier, a postdoctoral researcher working with Rabolt, notes that someone who has been diagnosed with early-stage cataracts also can take certain precautions to help delay their growth.
Rabolt, Pelletier and Christian Pellerin, also a postdoctoral researcher working on the project, are focusing on the use of the highly sensitive PA-IR to detect small proteins in the lens of the human eye. Those proteins are believed to aggregate and crystallize to form larger particles, or cataracts, that cast a shadow on the retina and eventually lead to blindness, unless the lens is surgically removed.
Other specific applications of this research into the molecular basis of eye diseases, including glaucoma and retinitis pigmentosa a hereditary disease that causes the rod photoreceptors in the retina
to gradually degenerate are envisioned, Rabolt says.
"Detection and intervention strategies like PA-IR will help usher in a new generation of tools that will improve the quality of life of the general population as it ages and for infants who are born with congenital cataracts," he says.
Rabolt notes that the recent grants to the College fit in with an ongoing effort by the NIH to support work with the potential to move directly "from the bench top [of a research lab] to the bedside" of a patient.
"NIH's new National Institute of Bio-Imaging and Bioengineering has been proactive, and this grant to the University is a vote of confidence in the diversity of expertise that exists here to accomplish these goals," Rabolt says.
The other NIH-funded multidisciplinary research effort will combine the expertise of Kristi L. Kiick, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and Eric M. Furst, assistant professor of chemical engineering, and will focus on the assembly of hydrogel materials via specific, biologically important ligand-receptor interactions.
Kiick will apply a combination of chemical and biological synthesis to design and produce various ligand-receptor pairs that will control gel assembly and materials properties, and Furst will develop optical methods to quantitatively characterize the physical properties of these materials on length scales that are relevant to cellular processes.
The combination of these researchers' expertise will permit the rational design of new materials that have controlled physical properties, drug delivery profiles and degradation rates in the body. Applications in tissue remodeling, wound treatment and chemotherapy will be possible.
"The support of our interdisciplinary research efforts by the NIH has been critical for launching our research in this area," Kiick says. "We are enthusiastic about the opportunities, through our combination of expertise, to design, assemble and characterize unique biomaterials. Our abilities to manipulate and understand materials properties on the nanoscale will enable the invention of new materials that are appropriately responsive to specific cells in the body, and these advances will open up new strategies for targeted drug delivery."
--Neil Thomas, AS '76