Harmonization/consensus on clinical examinations, treatment guidelines, patient information, clinical endpoints.
Combining patient cohorts for multi-centre clinical studies, combining tissue/blood/tear samples for biomarker, genetic and high-throughput molecular analysis.
Limbal stem cell deficiency and subsequent keratopathy in a patient suffering from congenial aniridia.
Approaches of stem cell biology, tissue engineering, gene delivery (eg. viral vectors), gene modification (CRISPR/Cas9 technology) or gene modulation (through miRNA) for developing translational regenerative therapeutic strategies for the treatment of aniridia.
Colonies grown from limbal stem cells and stained with crystal violet.
Transplantation, Inflammation and Immunity: evaluation of new/emerging transplantation techniques for AAK, dry eye disease, surgical outcomes, fibrosis, immune response, inflammation, and corneal neovascularization in aniridia-associated keratopathy.
Cell-based, small animal, dry eye, transplantation, therapy, imaging in animals, opportunities for collaboration and centralized analysis.
Limbal stem cell (LSC) are believed to be affected in Aniridia. Shalom-Feuerstein’s lab developed genetic mouse models that allow (i) LSC labeling using K15-GFP reporter gene and (ii) LSC fate mapping using multi-color “Confetti” fluorescent reporter genes that are randomly activated in K14+ LSC. References: Nasser et al, Cell Reports 2018; Amitai-Lange et al, Stem Cells 2015; Amitai-Lange et al, JoVE 2015.
Associations providing input into new research questions and studies, aniridia syndrome, non-ocular complications, survey studies, obtaining patient samples for research.
When we are looking for something we must be aware of the perspective… Aniridia-net.eu/WG6 is looking for the right perspective!
