NEI Center Core Grant for Vision Research

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SUMMARY Overall The overall purpose of the Center Core Grant for Vision Research is to provide core services and resources to enhance and accelerate the productivity and impact of the vision research community at the University of California, San Diego. Specifically, the Center Core Grant for Vision Research will leverage the outstanding basic science and clinical research expertise of National Eye Institute funded investigators by providing important resources and services organized into the following five distinct cores. 1. The Vision Biostatistics Core provides dedicated statistical expertise for the vision research community at UCSD. There are several common analysis themes and statistical issues that can be addressed effectively and efficiently by having a dedicated biostatistician familiar with eye research to analyze vision-related data and to ensure rigor and transparency of the results. 2. The Animal Structure and Function Core will provide shared instrumentation and a technician to assist with ocular structural imaging and functional imaging in animals. 3. The Computational Ophthalmology and Biomedical Informatics Core provides i) dedicated high- performance CPU and GPU computing resources ii) 3 computer programmers, iii) institutional software licenses, iv) electronic health record data extraction services, v) cloud-based data management infrastructure, and vi) secure file sharing and backup services to support UCSD’s cellular, animal and human vision research studies. 4. The Histology, Tissue Processing and High Content Microscopy Core provides rapid characterization of eye tissue with respect to histology, immunohistochemistry and high content microscopy for drug screening and histologic specimen imaging by supporting instrumentation and a technician who is familiar with ocular anatomy and techniques required to properly process ocular tissues. 5. The new Viral Production and CRISPR Engineering Core provides centralized dedicated space, equipment and personnel for the production, isolation and titering of adeno-associated virus (AAV) and lentivirus (LV) vectors and assistance with non-viral CRISPR gene editing. These cores will improve the efficiency and productivity and impact of UCSD vision scientists by providing core services that are unavailable or not easily accessible to individual investigators. The core grant infrastructure and resources also leverage the expertise of each participating investigator to enhance multidisciplinary collaboration for the benefit of the entire UCSD vision research community.