Optical imaging of retinal function for gene and cell therapies

Description

Gene and cell therapies offer hope of vision restoration for patients with inherited retinal diseases (IRDs). Retinal imaging is crucial for the development of these therapies, enabling patient diagnostics to determine which cells are degenerated, determining an appropriate therapeutic plan and cell therapy manipulations, and the clinical monitoring during treatment. The EU-funded OPTORETINA project aims to combine the existing optical setups of recently introduced dynamic full-field optical coherence tomography and adaptive optics ophthalmoscopy. This approach will allow retinal stimulation with visible light to evaluate the surviving cells in IRDs patients, characterise retinal organoids derived from pluripotent stem cells, and monitor patients in the clinical setting to check that vision is being successfully preserved or restored.