TransCoRe: Translational Success in Corneal Regenerative Medicine
Globally, 12.7 million people await corneal transplantation. Since only 1 in 70 are treated due donor tissue shortage, researchers have turned to regenerative cell-, tissue-engineering-, gene- and drug-based alternatives. However, despite decades of research, few have crossed the “valley of death” of translation to assume a well-defined role in the corneal blindness treatment paradigm. Today, corneal transplantation remains the gold standard therapy. The need to accelerate the translation of emerging regenerative therapies to overcome the burden of corneal blindness is clear. The problems is that there is no objective way to determine the translational potential of emerging therapies.
Determining the translational potential of emerging therapies is essential both for deciding whether their development is worth pursuing and for building customized strategies to accelerate their translational progress. Our aim is therefore to develop a translational potential assessment tool for emerging cornea regenerative therapies. In this project, we will:
Map the current rate of translation of corneal regenerative therapies, process bottlenecks, and factors predictive of translational success.
Design a low-fidelity prototype of a translational potential assessment tool.
And test the prototype to collect feedback from cornea researchers on concept, content, design and utility.
This tool would be the first of its kind and would directly impact cornea researchers, funding entities, and industry who must make resource allocation and directional decisions early in technology development. The ambition is to make safe and effective alternatives available to cornea-blind patients faster.
