Dr. Ting-Jiun Chen from Mount Sinai awarded a $70,000 grant for Amblyopia Research

Amblyopia is a widespread form of visual impairment, affecting about 1–5% of the human population. It is caused by abnormal visual experience in childhood. Amblyopia can be cured if the treatment is initiated early in life. However, visual dysfunction is hardly detectable in children and it results in visual impairment permanently. The long-term goal of this proposal is to discover new regulatory mechanisms to provide therapeutic targets and drugs in the adult brain for recovery from Amblyopia.

In Dr. Chen’s preliminary study, she has found that two positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) which enhanced acetylcholine (ACh)-evoked responses in the

subpopulation of Somatostatin (SST) interneurons expressing α2 subunit of nAChRs. Interestingly, she also found that one of the PAMs restored the visual cortex plasticity in adult mice. The study will test the hypothesis that nAChRα2 in SST interneurons is the potential therapeutical target to induce recovery from amblyopia in adulthood. The proposed project would be helpful to discover new therapeutic targets for amblyopia treatment.