A group of NIH-funded investigators at the University of Florida is requesting funds to purchase equipment supporting the measurement of ocular outcomes in rodent models of eye diseases. The Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Florida supports an Ocular Animal Core behind the pathogen barrier in the animal care facility to promote longitudinal investigations of animal models of ocular diseases and the outcomes of therapies in these model systems. This application describes the immediate needs of our research faculty for instruments capable of 1) documenting and quantifying changes in retinal health (funduscope and optical coherence tomography), 2) measuring restoration and/or preservation of visual function (behavioral acuity assay system), and 3) facilitating surgical isolation of labeled tissue for downstream single-cell assays (fluorescence stereomicroscope). The Leica-Bioptigen EnvisuR OCT system will replace our existing OCT, providing a much needed improvement in axial resolution of the retinal layers. The Micron IV funduscope will provide both new capacity and new capabilities (open a bottleneck and allow for collection of more highly resolved data and more fluorophore options). The existing OCT and funduscope in the core facility are maximally used, or are outdated and cannot be upgraded to accomplish the imaging needs of the major and minor users of this application. The CerebralMechanics Acumen water maze will add the capability of measuring higher order visual processing mediated by the visual cortex, and will be a new addition to the Ocular Animal Core. The Leica fluorescent stereomicroscope will also be a new addition to the barrier facility, providing the capability of surgically isolating labeled tissue for downstream applications. As with the current instruments, the proposed new equipment will be housed and managed in the Ocular Animal Core, a shared-use core in the animal care facility. All major and minor users will have access to the instrument and training will be provided through the established core infrastructure. The usage charges and institutional funding have historically supported the service contracts and other repairs; therefore, we foresee no difficulty in this arrangement continuing for these new pieces of equipment. The shared core facility has an extensive track record of education, training and productivity. The availability of this technology is crucial for the mission of the University of Florida with the overall goals of finding treatments for human disease and to train the next generation of outstanding investigators in biomedical sciences.
The major goal of this application is to request several shared instruments, which are needed for the enhancement of NIH-supported research projects in basic and translational vision science at the University of Florida. This equipment will be set up in an already established, centralized core facility. The major users of these instruments are from multiple research groups and departments that are addressing fundamental biological research in characterizing animal models of ocular diseases and developing preclinical data to support treatments for these diseases.
