Retinal research:
looking out for eye disease
By Megan Harrison

OTTAWA — Dr. Stuart Coupland has been working at the University of Ottawa Eye Institute for over 20 years, and during that time has seen a lot of progress. Today his lab is filled with high-tech machinery, monitors that display full colour 3-D models, and cameras that can detect retinal diseases in even their earliest stages.

And yet in the far corner of the room sits a worn, beige plastic box with a 12-inch monitor on one side, and a floppy drive on the other. A primitive-looking keyboard and mouse lay in front.

It's a Macintosh Apple Lisa, one of the earliest commercial computers with a point-and-click graphic interface. It was first released in 1983.

"That was the first computer I owned when I started working here," Coupland says with a chuckle. "It still works, but I just keep it around for historical value."

Making the diagnosis

Two of the machines Coupland does use in the Eye Institute's relatively new Visual Electrodiagnostic Laboratory, of which he is the director, are called Electroretinograms.

Each machine is hooked up to a computer, and are used as diagnostic tools for various retinal diseases.

Patients place their head in one or the other of the machines, depending on whether their eye troubles are related to rods or cones. Black and white images flicker at different points on the screen and the eyes' electrical response is recorded.

Both machines present their findings in a 3-D multi-hexagonal pattern similar to the dome structures often found at neighbourhood playgrounds, but laid out flat. The outer hexagons are slightly larger then the ones in the centre.

Coupland can detect a variety of retinal diseases based on the shape and colour of the graph provided, and is then able to decide on a course of treatment.

An eye on research

Coupland also uses the Electroretinograms for his research. He takes the information received from tests on both animals and humans to develop new treatments for retinal illnesses.

The diseases Coupland encounters most are retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic degenerative disease which effects night and peripheral vision, and age-related macular degeneration, one of the leading causes of blindness in seniors.

Coupland's research also focuses on the creation of new, more sensitive tests that are able detect these diseases at their various stages.

"The sensitivity of the test is important," says Coupland. "Some of our drug treatments don't cure the disease, but they halt its progression. If you've got a very sensitive test you can determine a time to give second treatment."

The human trials are used mainly to detect the effectiveness of different drugs, but the development of these drugs is done through experiments on mice and rats.

"The structure of their eye is very similar to humans," Coupland says, adding that rodents are also useful because the disease will develop much faster than it would in humans

"There's a lot of things you can do with animals that you just can't do with humans," Coupland says. "You can't take an eye out of a human and look at the retinal structure, at the structural changes which have occurred or haven't occurred."

Coupland uses miniaturized Electroretinograms to conduct the same tests on rodents as he does on people.

"They're exactly the same machine," assures Coupland. "Just mouse-sized."

The future of retinal research

Coupland shares his animal laboratory with Dr. Catherine Tsilfidis, another researcher who studies the regenerative properties of animals like newts and frogs.

She puts her theories to work at the Eye Institute by studying how adult stem cells developed by researchers in Montreal can help regenerate cells in the eye.

Recent tests have found that if these regenerative cells are placed in a healthy eye, they do nothing, but if put in an eye with retinal degeneration, they migrate to the site of the damage.

Coupland is excited about the prospect of one day using this type of research as a treatment for retinal diseases, and says it's results like these that make it easy to come to work everyday.

"I do love my work," he says. "It's an exciting field to be in. There's a lot of great stuff going on and a lot more great stuff to come."