Soft Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory

Decellularized optic nerve head model to study glaucoma biomechanics Purpose : While elevated IOP is often associated with glaucoma, many patients develop glaucoma with normal IOPs or experience ocular hypertension without developing glaucoma, indicating that other factors contribute to the disease. Evaluating these factors in vivo can be difficult and costly, though, so we have developed a model using decellularized posterior poles to aid in studying glaucoma biomechanics. Methods : Posterior poles were isolated from fresh porcine eyes, and the retina and choroid were removed. The dissected tissue was then subjected to a mild, detergent-based decellularization process. Histology was performed to show that decellularization removed cells while maintaining the architecture and basement membrane of the tissue. To evaluate the ability of the model to mimic dissected tissue, we subjected the tissue to 5 and 15 mmHg of pressure and imaged the lamina cribrosa at each pressure using two-ph...