Abstract
Presentation Description :
The National Eye Institute (NEI) has two Director’s Initiatives that focus on regenerative medicine: the Audacious Goals Initiative (AGI) and the 3-D Retina Organoid Challenge (3D ROC). The NEI AGI continues to pursue its goal to regenerate neurons and their neural connections in the eye and visual system. The initiative issued its third funding opportunity in December of 2017 which solicited applications to develop robust translational models that can inform the study of stem cell replacement strategies. The initiative is focused on translating promising preclinical regenerative medicine studies into clinical trials that will touch patients. To inform this objective NEI has brought on new AGI Steering Committee members. In the spring of 2017, NEI announced the 3D Retina Organoid Challenge which asked for new ideas to produce functional 3-dimensional human retinas that could be used for disease modeling or drug testing. In September 2017, Erin Lavik of University of Maryland Baltimore County was awarded $90,000 for an innovative idea to use screen printing methods to build retina organoids. The NEI has now launched a second competition, 3D ROC 2020, which calls for the generation of 3-D retinal organoids and demonstration that they function as disease models or drug screening tools. The preliminary submission period ends October 1, 2018 and the final submission date is March 2, 2020 with up to $1 million in prizes available.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.