Home Department: undeclared
Mentor: David Myung, Ophthalmology

Ignacio’s research will tackle cornea functionality wounds. Because the cornea lacks blood vessels, which allows for its transparency, it has limited ability to heal after sustaining a wound, leaving it susceptible to ulceration, scarring, and becoming opaque. Ignacio will experiment by using a cross linked collagen-PEG gel carrier as a vehicle to carry mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to promote wound healing in the cornea. His aim is to control and characterize the growth of MSCs and their output within collagen gels for the repair of wounded corneas.