State Of Art Methodologies In Studying Ocular Surface Diseases

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editor

Cecilia Chao

University of New South Wales, Sydney; University of Houston, College of Optometry

Dr Cecilia Chao is a translational research optometrist. She is currently appointed as an Adjunct Lecturer at the School of Optometry and Vision Science, UNSW Sydney Australia, and a Senior Research Associate at University of Houston College of Optometry. She was trained in the State University of New York, College of Optometry and in Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Her research expertise on the ocular surface includes studying the mechanism and discovering potential biomarkers and treatment for dry eye, corneal neuropathic pain and post-LASIK induced neuropathic dry eye using state of art in vivo techniques in both humans and animal models. She also studies contact lens induced sub-clinical inflammatory responses as biomarkers to predict and prevent corneal infiltrative events.

Collection Overview

In vivo imaging of the ocular surface in both humans and animals has become a hot topic in eye research. These imaging techniques allow us studying and monitoring the disease stage by examining the morphology of the cellular structure of the cornea in humans. This also gives us insight into the potential cell to cell communication and kinetic changes in different disease stages, particularly in the cornea and larcimal glands in animal models in vivo.

Apart from the imaging, there are growing techniques that are currently used to discover biomarkers which allow us determining the underneath etiology of dry eye disease in animal models. Recent improvements in tissue (cornea, lacrimal glands, and meibomian glands) and/or single cell isolation coupled with immunohistological staining technique have been utilized. In this context, there is rising interest in using these advanced methods to examine and determine new biomarkers for ocular surface diseases, such as dry eye disease, in different eye tissues.

The goal of this JoVE Collection is to provide detailed state-of-the-art protocols and procedures of the ocular surface imaging and on hand tissue handling techniques currently used in the clinical and animal models to discover novel biomarkers for ocular diseases.