Glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness in persons between the ages of 40-80 as of 2013 and is estimated to affect about 76 million people worldwide by 2020. Current standard-of-care approaches to glaucoma diagnosis and management are limited because they are based on detecting loss of vision or axons, an irreversible change. Newer modalities are required to detect the ill health of axons at earlier stages of degeneration where intervention might rescue and/or reverse disease progression. Similarly, new therapeutic approaches are needed in order to intervene during these earlier stages. This will also require improved understanding about the sequence of early-stage pathophysiological changes, such as axonal transport disruption within retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), whose axons form the optic nerve and which are the primary cells damaged by glaucoma. Hence, it is critical to develop in vivo assays of axonal transport that can be used in laboratory models and pre-clinical studies and which can also be used to inform emerging, novel clinical imaging techniques. Currently, only histopathological methods are available, which is time-consuming and requires large numbers of animals. Here we will discuss hybrid lipid-coated gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as probes for tracking axonal pathways in the retina in vivo, as well as potential drug delivery vehicles. Using confocal microscopy, we will show that cellular uptake in RGCs is dependent on the surface architecture of the AuNPs. We expect that when combined with optical imaging technologies, these nanoprobes can be markers that can be used by researchers to track axonal transport in the retina.

Hybrid lipid-coated gold nanoparticles for studying axonal transport mechanisms in the retina

255th National Meeting (2018)

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