Our Research Themes
Target Disease
Age-related
Macular Degeneration
Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is a vision threatening disease that typically occur in aged patients. As the macula of the retina is damaged, the center of the visual field is blurred or lost. It does not result in complete blindness, but loss of central vision will greatly reduce the quality of life .
AMD is known to be progressive disease, and its progression is divided into early, intermediate, and late. The late type, also divided into dry-AMD and wet-AMD, show severe visual symptoms. Despite the clinical practices and medications, it can be only treated to reduce symptoms but never cured.
Our team focus on early diagnosis of the intermediate AMD, investigating a new biomarker. We study the physiology of Retina and Choroid to find a novel application that can prevent AMD progression.
Diabetic
Retinopathy
Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is one of the common, up to 80%, complications in diabetic mellitus and is a leading cause of blindness. Though it is treatable, still never cured. DR can be occurred regardless of age. The two stages of the DR can be described as non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy(NPDR) and proliferative diabetic retinopahty(PDR). NPDR exhibit microaneurysms at the retinal vessels and macular edema, PDR exhibit pathological neovascularization in retina and often retinal hemorrhage . These symptoms are vascular diseases, which accompany the dysfunction of the endothelial cell, pericyte, and endothelial cell-pericyte interaction.
Our team study the physiology of retinal vessels and pericytes to prevent the pathogenesis and progresssion of DR, and restore the damaged vessels for novel teatment.
Target Tissue
Retina
Retina is the innermost tissue of the eye that receive the light(image) and translate into electrical nerual signal to create visual perception. The retina is composed of 10 layers, organized with neurons and supporting layers. We study the cellular function of the retina, especially on the vascular cells and RPE that metabolically support the functioning neurons, as well as evaluating the neural function.
Choroid
Choroid is the most highly vascularized tissue in the body. It metabolically supports the RPE and photoreceptors. Due to its unique structure and physiology, choroid has not been studied well enough for long. But recent studies and clinical data shows that choroid is a key for many vision threatening macular diseases. We study choroid and its vascular system to understand choroidopathy and accompanied visual impairment.
Target Study
Pericyte
Study
-Pericyte Physiology
-Pericyte Function
-Pericyte Regeneration
-Pericyte-Endothelial cell interaction
-Smooth Muscle Cell Physiology
-Smooth Muscle Cell Function
-Smooth Muscle Cell Regeneration
-Pericyte and Smooth Muscle Cell in Diseases
Endothelial Cell Study
-Angiogenesis
-Vasculogenesis
-Vessel regression
-Endothelial Cell physiology
-Endothelial Cell Function
-Endothelium Structure
-Endothellial Cell in Diseases
-Outer Blood-Retina-Barrier
-Photoreceptor support
-Geographic Atrophy
-Drusen
-RPE degeneration
-RPE senescence
-RPE ROS stress
Exosome&
miRNA Study
-Aqueous Humor derived Exosome
-Exosomal miRNA
-Exosomal RNA
-Exosomal Proteins
-small RNA interference
-New biomarker for Diseases
Transcriptome
Study
-Patient Sample Trasncriptome analysis
-Treatment Response analysis
-Disease Specific analysis
-Disease Progression Estimation
-Disease Modeling using Transgenic animal
-Target gene therapy
-Next-Generation Sequencing