Do Good Showcase
We presented why PACAP delivery matters, how our mouse study compares eye drops with injections, and what we’ve done so far.
Team SNAPS · UMD Gemstone Honors
What if we could protect vision by protecting the retina?
In glaucoma, damage to the cells that carry visual signals can lead to lasting vision loss. We’re studying neuroprotection: helping those cells survive after injury. Our experiment asks whether PACAP eye drops can protect them as effectively as injections in mice.
PACAP
Eye drops
Topical delivery
Injections
Delivery into the eye
Why it matters
Protect the cells that make sight possible.
Retinal ganglion cells carry information from the eye to the brain. Keeping those cells alive is one avenue researchers are exploring to prevent vision loss in glaucoma. For Team SNAPS, the first step is measuring how many cells survive after optic nerve injury and whether the way we deliver PACAP makes a difference.
Team updates
What we’ve been working on
Our first retinal images
We captured preliminary images of a control retina stained for Brn3a and of control and injured retinas stained for melanopsin. These images document our early staining and imaging work.
Public dataset reanalysis
We looked at how often retinal ganglion cells expressed the gene for PACAP at different times after optic nerve injury.
See the figure