Dr. Ruchi Sharma from National Eye Institute Awarded $90,000 Knights Templar Eye Foundation Grant to Study Visual Problems in Albinism

Dr. Ruchi Sharma from the National Eye Institute, Bethesda, Maryland was awarded a $90,000 grant to study: Developing Foveal iPSC-RPE from Albinism Patients to Discover Foveal Hypoplasia Associated RPE Defects.

Lack of pigmentation results in visual problems in albinism patients due to the improper development of the central part of the retina (the fovea) that is responsible for our day, color, and high acuity vision. Dr. Sharma aims to use induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from albinism patients and differentiate them into fovea-specific retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a monolayer of cells that support the photosensitive cells called photoreceptors. She believes that the completion of this project will help to understand how the lack of pigmentation affects the foveal RPE cell phenotype in patients with foveal defects and if the supplementation of metabolites of the pigmentation pathway can rescue the proper foveal phenotype in iPSC-RPE derived from albinism patients.