RPB Medical Student Fellowship (2013)

RPB MEDICAL STUDENT FELLOWSHIPS allow gifted students to take a year off from medical school and devote time to the pursuit of a research project within an RPB grantee department. Our current multimodal imaging (oximetry and blood flow imaging, EY-019951-A1) is focused on retinal imaging in the oxygen retinopathy model in vivo, as a tool to identify early metabolic signatures that would dictate intervention prior to development of neovascularization. In our proposal, we are interested in identifying the vascular metabolic derangements that herald angiogenesis as a result of retinal ischemia, so that we may identify pre-angiogenic metabolic targets for preventing retinopathy. On the other, the current project submitted by Jonathan will focus on the metabolic changes associated with early diabetic retinopathy, using the streptozotocin (STZ) rat model.