Budd Tucker
University of Iowa, IA·Biomedical Engineering
Blindness from retinal disease often comes from losing cells that the human retina cannot regrow. These include photoreceptors, the light-sensing cells, which are lost in inherited retinal degeneration.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Neuroscience
- Topics
induced pluripotent stem cells
iPSC
retinal organoids
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Feb 2030
What they work on
- Train an AI algorithm on imaging data collected during iPSC generation and retinal derivation to select patient stem cell lines with a strong tendency to form retinal tissue.
- Correlate developmental gene expression with imaging data from differentiating retinal organoids to identify visual cues that let a robotic platform judge maturity and perform non-destructive release testing.
- Test whether sustained co-delivery of acriflavine, a HIF-1alpha inhibitor, and the antifibrotic drug pirfenidone from ultrasound-triggerable polyurethane nanocapsules preserves retinal tissue and vision in wet AMD.
- Develop genome-wide screens using differentiation outcomes and biomechanical properties to find pathways that regulate retina formation from human iPSCs.
- Identify master regulators of retinal cell differentiation with systems biology, and validate them by modulating these pathways and measuring resulting retinal subtypes.
- Use microfluidic cell separation with new markers to produce the proper proportion of rod and cone photoreceptors from retinal organoids.
More about the research
In wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), damage comes from leaky new blood vessels and scarring. The grants share one goal: protecting or replacing retinal tissue to preserve sight. Two projects aim to produce retinal cells from stem cells for transplant more reliably. A third develops a long-lasting drug delivery system for wet AMD.
Why it matters
Photoreceptor loss and age-related macular degeneration are leading causes of irreversible blindness in the United States. AI-guided automated manufacturing and better control of retinal differentiation could make patient-matched photoreceptor cell therapies faster and cheaper to produce and test. A sustained, ultrasound-adjustable two-drug implant may slow wet AMD in patients who respond poorly to anti-VEGF injections.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Non-destructive assessment of retinal differentiation capacity and developmental maturity
NIH · Mar 2025 – Feb 2030
Sustained Treatment of wet AMD
NIH · Jun 2024 – May 2028
Collaborative Research: RECODE: Microfluidic and genetic technologies to direct and select retinal cell types from human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived retinal organoids
NSF · Oct 2022 – Sep 2026
Closest labs
Yannis Paulus
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Biomedical Engineering
Upgrade a combined photoacoustic microscopy, optical coherence tomography and fluorescence microscopy system to image rabbit eyes in real time, without harming the eye.
Nancy Philp
Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Neuroscience
Test whether the retinal pigment epithelium keeps some glucose for its own biosynthetic and phagocytic activities, using RPE-iΔGlut1 mice that lack the glucose transporter GLUT1 in the RPE.
Katelyn Swindle-Reilly
Ohio State University, OH·Biomedical Engineering
Synthesize and characterize an investigational anti-inflammatory drug and load it into ROS-responsive polydopamine nanoparticles that release more drug under oxidative stress.
The school
University of Iowa: 32 labs on PI Pages, $703M a year on research, 418 research doctorates a year.
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