 I want to make sure that everyone has time to finish their presentation. So, and so, because we have three medical students, I'm going to kind of, just to warn everyone, I'm going to kind of keep track of time and help them stay on track, because I always feel bad for the last medical student when everyone's really sick of it and they have to rush through. So, to start off we'll have Chris Bowen speaking to us. He's from Utah, did undergraduate at Utah State University and then he's been here for medical school. He actually took some time off during medical school. He took a year to get a master's degree in biomedical engineering. And today he's presenting Bench to Bedside Ocular Drug Delivery. Okay, well I'm Chris and I'm really excited to be here and talking about Bench to Bedside and Ocular Drug Delivery Research. The cool thing about the University of Utah is it's really like a hub. It's a ground in which people can come together and create all of these. And in 2011, this was the newspaper title that we were number one again for startup companies creating lots of jobs and a lot of support to the economy. And so I was thinking, what is it that is unique about the University of Utah that allows for this? And I think it's this combination of and collaboration between engineering and business, everybody working together. The cool thing about this is that a lot of you in this room are part of this, are either inventors or entrepreneurs. In the Moran, we have people working on anti-infective needles. We have people that are working on intraocular lenses with continuous drug delivery, as well as retinal surgery robots that's pretty much the next Da Vinci but for retinal surgery. And it's really, really cool to see all the innovation happening. The cool thing is, is each one has to go through this, the FDA regulatory pathway. But usually the right limiting step up here is the user need. And that is, well what is the problem? What needs to happen? So it's the surgeon or the clinician that says, well I really wish we had this scope that did this a little differently or I wish we had this tool that could work this way. The engineer or the business person usually doesn't have the idea of well what's actually wrong that needs to be fixed and they're really eager to fix. So truly you are and the clinicians are the lifeblood of bio-innovation. And a little plug for students, when they come up and they really, really appreciate being mentored by you guys. So today I get to talk about a project I've been working on with Dr. Roscoe. And it began last year when I was taking a biocompatibility class from Dr. Bochek and NIH grant and I wanted to make it something that actually was real research instead of just homework. And so I called around and Dr. Roscoe was super willing to let me work with her and her project. So HighStem is a polymer that's a drug delivery platform and it's been in licensed J-therapeutics which Dr. Roscoe founded. And that allows for this project that we've been working on. So it began with a need. So what is the biocompatibility of this polymer in high specifically? And then what's the degradation rate? This drug polymer has been used in many other locations in the body but not specifically in the eye. And so that's the journey that's been going on. The purpose is for continuous drug release for a variety of ocular pathologies. HighStem is really cool. What it is is it's a polyglycol and it's been cross linked with a thylated hyaluronic acid. And all those things are extremely biocompatibility friendly. At least their components are. And so when you combine them you have a very unique robust platform for delivering proteins and small molecules. It can come as either a liquid an injectable or a film. Is it a lot of a variety in which it can be used in the ocular world. If we compare it to some of the current drug delivery, which is used in nano medicine, antibiotic delivery, just a bunch of different things. Very similar in that it has biocompatibility that's been shown throughout the rest of the body. But one of the problems is that when it degrades and then if you have a protein that you're trying to deliver it will denature it or change its structure. And so it's not very friendly in that way. As well as it has pro inflammatory markers or byproducts. So HighStem is really advantageous in that way because it's pH neutral and has no inflammatory byproducts. Research that's been done on this, not in the eye, has shown that it prevents post certifications as well as preventing scarring and a lot of other wound issues. Additionally it's been shown to deliver proteins in small molecules such as VEGF, FGF, synitinib, as well as a host of other things throughout for systemic use. It's also being used in the veterinary world for wound healing marketed by and centrics here in Selick City called remend. And also in Europe it's being used for stem cell delivery. So it has this large capability for use. So the question is where would we want to use this in the eye? The cornea, corneal surface pathologies for retinal pathologies such as AMD, so one of our questions was the degradation rate. So how can we determine how fast it's gonna break down? Because remember it's polyethylene glycol and it's linked to hyaluronic acid. And that hyaluronic acid can be broken down easily by a host, the primary enzyme hyaluronic. And that enzyme family has six isotypes. The last three are usually associated with the body. So the first three isotypes are the ones that would be most likely in the eye. So this is a project that we're just starting now. And our plan is to do immunohistochemistry to look for where exactly this, which isotype is found in. And then we'll run ELISA's. We currently have human, monkey, and rabbit eyes. To determine the concentration. So two weeks ago, just before I started this rotation, we ran a quick preview. We found that in human tears, I should say Barbara's human tears, we found hyaluronic dase, the enzyme that breaks it down, isotype one. In the tears, monkey aqueous and vitreous. I think we diluted it a little too much and it wasn't found in some of the others because the lower limits was about two and a half nanometers, nanograms, excuse me. So our next step is once we finish this, we'll have all of our healthy eyes and then we'll compare it to the disease eyes. And the reason why is because studies have shown that when an individual is sick or has different diseases such as scleroderma or rheumatological diseases, they have an up regulation of hyaluronic dase. And so we wanna know if we're gonna deliver this drug and it has hyaluronic acid in it, if they're sick, we might change the dosage and how much we actually give because the enzyme that breaks it down is gonna be either up-regulated or down-regulated. So that's our next step. So once we finish that and go on to biocompatibility testing as well with the ISO 10993, we will go on refining the drug release, optimizing that film shape for the different needs depending on where they're gonna go in the eye, sterilization protocols, and then additional verification studies in both animals and humans. And I'm really excited to be able to work with Dr. Roscoe's been a really fun experience so far as well as Dr. Lee, one of my lab mentors. Any questions? Yeah. I have so much questions as a comment. I think this work is very exciting. I think drug delivery, especially in the eye and all segments of the eye is an exciting place to be. The one thing that hasn't been mentioned here that I don't know is gonna be under the business part of the hottest regulatory. And I think the biggest hurdle right now to get put together a biodegradable polymer or which could put both an antibiotic and a steroid and put it in that company basically around Usherdex which is a little bit like steroids, but the issues, and same thing, intracular lenses now. People have been dipping intracular lenses so every what would be better than so it's still gonna have an antibiotic and so it's gonna start to put it in the eye and have to worry about compliance and have to worry about the expense of people using it.