Principal investigator: Shih, Wei-Heng
University: Drexel University
Industry partners: AQD Life Sciences, LLC
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an abnormal growth of blood vessels in the eye, causing bleeding around the retina/choroid. It is a progressive disease and accounts for almost 9% of total blindness. Normal treatment involves injections containing anti-vascular endothelial growth factor, which halts the growing blood vessels. The Anti-VEGF treatment is not permanent and requires expensive, repeated injections. These repeated injections can be avoided by gene delivery, delivering the genes that express the antibodies against the growth factor.
It has been shown that ZnSe with a ZnS coating did not exhibit any significant in vivo toxicity outcome in mice.1 Our own study also indicated ZnSe AQD was not cytotoxic to Human hepatocyte cells (HepG2) and Human osteoblast cells (HOS) at concentration less than 50 M in term of Se.2 We will investigate the delivery of ZnSe AQD-PEI complex into endothelial cell lines such as HUVECs and HuDMECs as models for blood vessels We have also been concerned about toxicity of nanoparticles to the human body, so to address this issue, we will study the cytotoxicity of the ZnSe-PEI complex to endothelial cells. We anticipate creating a biocompatible, nontoxic gene delivery vehicle for AMD treatment to avoid the current painful and expensive repeated injection.