Mudders are benefitting from the research expertise of Elizabeth (Cornelius) Orwin ’95, who is working on designing a tissue engineered artificial corneal model, a complicated problem that few undergraduate colleges are undertaking.

Anyone doubting the complexity of this task need only look at Orwin’s Web site. Pictured are the many ways in which the project is being investigated by Orwin, her teams of students and a number of collaborating faculty members.

Think of the cornea as a window, one that allows light to pass through to the retina, which gives us the gift of sight. If this window, the primary focusing element of the eye, becomes damaged or diseased, sight is impaired or lost. Fortunately, corneal transplants can restore vision in most cases. The challenge is maintaining a supply of healthy corneas to use for this purpose.

In the United States, where more than 40,000 corneal transplants are successfully performed each year, this hasn’t been a problem yet. But with a recent increase in LASIK refractive surgeries, which disqualifies corneas for transplantation, donor corneas may become more rare.

This is one reason why scientists are attempting to design artificial corneas. Orwin focused her Ph.D. research on tissue engineering of the cornea while at the University of Minnesota. She went on to teach at the University of St. Thomas and then worked at a small start-up company investigating a new protein matrix for healing wounds. In 2001, she returned to HMC with an extensive background in biomaterials, tissue engineering and wound healing, and was appointed assistant professor of engineering and biology, the college’s first joint appointment.

Designing an artificial cornea is a multidisciplinary problem that benefits from input from all departments. “Most of the students working on this project end up doing graduate-level research. I think it is great that students get to work on such a cutting-edge problem,” said Orwin.

The idea is to make a new cornea out of cells and some kind of matrix material or biological polymer, not unlike you would find in your skin or eye, she said. Orwin explained her strategy.

“We put the cells and matrix together in a dish and then add mechanical and chemical signals by growing it in a bioreactor,” she said. “Then we can use the optical coherence microscope (OCM) to look at tissue structure, confocal techniques to assess the behavior of the cells, and materials testing to determine the mechanical properties of the matrix.” To accomplish these various tasks, Orwin is collaborating with professors Richard Haskell and Dan Petersen in physics, and Shenda Baker in chemistry.

A main goal is to try and create a structure that is transparent, just like a healthy cornea. Orwin said the type I collagen sponges they are currently using as a “scaffold” can never be 100 percent transparent, but she hopes to achieve optimal transparency by using an electrospinning apparatus to produce oriented nanofibrous matrices. Orwin hopes to get closer to the smaller more oriented fibrils a real cornea exhibits, and therefore closer to the desired transparency.

Each facet of the project—OCM, scaffolding, bioreactor, immunogold labeling, cell phenotype study and mechanical study—gives students a wide range of options for research. This past summer, Orwin had four teams of students working on various aspects of the project. The team of Jamie Shoffeitt ’07 (biology) and Megan Arman ’06 (physics) investigated the use of colloidal gold-antibody probes for labeling corneal cells in a collagen matrix during imaging in the optical coherence microscope. The technique has the potential not only to visualize the cells within the matrix during live culture, but also to assess cell behavior through the use of antibodies specific to particular cell surface proteins. Another team sought ways to produce small-diameter oriented fibers which are important for transparency. “To get a transparent, strong, stable structure is tough,” said Orwin.

Orwin thinks her work appeals to students because it has so many different facets. “They work on one piece of the project, but then they can see where their piece is going to fit into the larger picture.”

Orwin and her interdisciplinary team of students, as well as researchers elsewhere, are in the beginning stages of creating a tissue engineered cornea. HMC has distinguished itself in this field by using the OCM as one of its research tools and by utilizing undergraduate students to help work toward a solution.

“I’m delighted that I have had the opportunity to work with the students,” said Orwin. “They have taken on this tough project with great enthusiasm and have really made it their own. I also think it will set them up nicely for graduate school, industry and biomedical careers.”