Jacob Lorenzo Morales
University of La Laguna, Spain
Title: Novel therapeutic approaches against Acanthamoeba keratitis
Biography
Biography: Jacob Lorenzo Morales
Abstract
Acanthamoeba species are also the causative agents of a sight threating infection of the cornea known as Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) mainly affecting contact lens wearers. Interestingly, AK is increasingly being recognized as a severe sight-threatening ocular infection worldwide. Current diagnosis of AK is challenging, and the available treatments are lengthy and not fully effective against all strains. Moreover, the pathogenesis of Acanthamoeba is still under study, and the identification of the key factors involved in this process should be useful for the development of fully effective therapies. The current lack of available effective treatment is mostly due to the existence of a highly resistant cyst stage of Acanthamoeba. Together with common misdiagnosis of AK in most cases and a lack of a consensus for AK diagnosis, AK is becoming an emerging disease presenting an increased number of cases year after year worldwide. Therefore there is a need for a fast and reliable diagnostic tool and for novel effective therapeutic agents against these pathogens. Our laboratory is developing novel therapies based on the use of siRNAs in order to validate different cellular targets in these amoebae and to search for a chemical substitute or further develop aRNAi-based technology. Moreover, we have recently established a novel therapy based on statins which was elucidated using siRNAs approaches.
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