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Novel Devices For Studying Acute And Chronic Mechanical Stress In Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cells, Farhad Farjood, Elizabeth Vargis

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

Choroidal neovascularization (CNV) is a major cause of blindness in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Overexpression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a potent angiogenic protein, by retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells is a key stimulator of CNV. Mechanical stress occurs during different stages of AMD and is a possible inducer of VEGF expression in RPE cells. However, robust and realistic approaches to studying acute and chronic mechanical stress under various AMD stages do not exist.The majority of previous work has studied cyclic stretching of RPE cells grown on flexible substrates, but an ideal model must be able to …