Overview
Vision diseases, which include, among others, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, inherited retinal degenerations, and corneal diseases, affect more than 400 hundred million people worldwide. The majority of these diseases have no cure, and the treatments available are scarce and not effective in many patients. Moreover, biomarkers for early diagnosis are scarce or not available, and additional biomarkers for disease progression and response to therapy are also lacking. Therefore, the clarification of the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying their pathophysiology, the identification of novel biomarkers, and the development of novel advanced therapies are unmet needs.
After cataract and refractive surgeries many patients suffer from dysphotopsia (glare, halos, starbursts). These symptoms can be due to mechanisms occurring at neural level, and neuroadaptation and neuroplasticity of the brain may represent an important factor determining favorable outcomes.
Also, since the retina and the brain share the same embryonic origin, and the retina, contrarily to the brain, can be easily assessed by non-invasive and non-expensive techniques, it can be explored as a window to or a mirror of the brain to facilitate the diagnosis or brain diseases.
Our main goals are:
- To clarify the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying retinal degenerative diseases, giving a particular attention to neuroinflammation mediated by microglial cells, the immune cells of the central nervous system, as well as to cell-cell crosstalk mediated by extracellular vesicles, and other mediators;
- To identify new therapeutic targets;
- To identify novel biomarkers particularly for early disease diagnosis, but also for disease progression and response to therapy;
- To identify novel clinical endpoints for clinical trials in AMD;
- To dissect the interplay between diet, life style and genetic risk in AMD;
- To identify patients at risk of dementia by assessing the retina in diabetic patients, and common pathways underlying retinal and brain dysfunction and degeneration;
- To develop advanced therapeutic strategies for fungal keratitis and keratoconus (nanotechnology-based solution) glaucoma (promoting optic nerve regeneration) and retinitis pigmentosa 25 (gene editing);
- To discovery new strategies to facilitate neuroadaptation.
