On 13 February 2025 the Organ-on-Chip Centre Twente hosts a new sympoium, themed Eye-on-Chip.
Our keynote speaker will be Alex Garanto Iglesias from the Radboudumc and he will speak about his research on retinal models titled: "Retinal models in a dish to advance therapies to treat vision loss"
Join us on 13 February!
Location: Horst Toren T1300
Time: 14:00-15:30h for networking and symposium.
About Alex Garanto Iglesias
Dr. Garanto Iglesias studied Biology at the University of Barcelona followed by a PhD on the functional characterization of a gene associated with inherited retinal disease. He followed up with an additional year working on deubiquitinating enzymes and their role in the retinal fate. In 2012, dr. Garanto Iglesias joined Radboudumc as a post-doc. Since then, he focused his scientific career towards the development of novel therapeutic interventions for inherited retinal disease. In 2021 he established his own group at the Department of Pediatrics and Department of Human Genetics at Radboudumc on therapeutic RNA and DNA editing for retinal and neurometabolic diseases, where is currently a full principal investigator.
Eye-on-chip
Development of experimental models of the eye and the associated diseases is a major challenge. The anatomy of the eye and its tissues, including its vasculature, is intricate and highly structured.
For an experimental model to capture functional aspects of eye disease, it will be necessary to minimally capture some of the heterogeneity and tissue complexity of the eye, as well as to allow the controlled integration of specific risk factors and mechanistic factors.
Promising studies have shown that Organ-on-Chip technology can be applied to engineer models with sufficient complexity for specific pathophysiological processes like choroid neovascularization and photoreceptor outer segment phagocytosis to be captured. Such studies center mostly on addressing the engineering challenges, and therefore highlight the need for multidisciplinary development by building project groups with sufficient biomedical, (stem) cell biological and technical expertise and to include direct connections between stakeholders from academia, pharmaceutical industry, hi-tech industry.
