Jerzy Szablowski, assistant professor of bioengineering at the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing, has been selected by the BrightFocus Foundation to be the inaugural recipient of the Dr. Joe G. Hollyfield New Investigator Award for Macular Degeneration Research.
This non-profit foundation supports over 200 research projects in Alzheimer’s disease, macular degeneration, and glaucoma in over 17 countries. It's Dr. Joe G. Hollyfield New Investigator Award for Macular Degeneration Research honors the contributions of Joe G. Hollyfield, Ph.D., to the field of age-related macular degeneration research and for his leadership at the BrightFocus Foundation. The Macular Degeneration Research award acknowledges groundbreaking research exploring the root causes of and prevention strategies and treatments for macular degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss which affects roughly 200 million people worldwide. Without an effective treatment, these numbers are projected to increase to 288 million by 2040.
Szablowski was selected for these awards for his research proposal to develop an innovative non-invasive technology to diagnose, monitor, and develop new treatments for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and other eye disorders. His novel approach—Measurement from INtact Tissues, or MINT—can potentially transform the diagnostic and treatment landscape for AMD and other eye conditions by measuring levels of different gene transcripts in the intact retina using a simple blood test.
“I am very grateful to the BrightFocus Foundation for supporting the development of this technology, which may solve a longstanding clinical issue in age-related macular degeneration and other eye disorders,” Szablowski said.
A quick blood test is often the most convenient and non-invasive way to diagnose, monitor, and to uncover the underlying causes of many diseases. However, this method is only feasible when key proteins that act as disease signatures are secreted in blood, which is not the case for retinal proteins. This limitation has prevented researchers from studying the genetic cause of many eye diseases and hampered the development of effective treatments.
To overcome this issue, Szablowski and team devised an elegant gene monitoring approach that can non-invasively measure the levels of retinal proteins in real-time. The approach is based on their recent discovery of synthetic serum markers—Released Markers of Activity (RMAs)—which are proteins expressed within the tissue but can exit into the blood where they can be easily measured. They propose using the RMAs as a gauge to indirectly measure the levels of specific gene transcripts within the cells.
Their preliminary experiments to produce RMAs using viral vectors in mice brains have yielded promising results—with large quantities of RMAs that are stable in the bloodstream, and sensitive enough to allow detection of gene transcripts from a handful of neurons.
“While we proposed to utilize this novel technique to detect the mRNA levels of two genes that are considered as risk factors for AMD, this reporter system is versatile and can be used to measure the levels of any gene present within cells. We are very excited by this technology’s potential to advance research and clinical applications for previously untreatable eye conditions,” Szablowski added.