老年性白内障的发病受遗传和环境两大因素影响，目前关于该疾病的基础研究集中在单个基因或蛋白质的表达、修饰，且由于取得人体正常的健康晶体细胞困难较大，大部分实验所用的对照组细胞并不是来自同年龄段的人的晶状体。本课题研究的是将诱导自老年性白内障患者的晶体上皮细胞的诱导性多潜能干细胞（induced pluripotent stem cells）继续诱导分化成正常的晶体上皮细胞，这样，在不考虑遗传因素的前提下，我们就又得到了患者发病前的健康晶体上皮细胞，从而为研究病态的晶体细胞提供了最佳的健康对照。进一步的，我们将利用新一代基因芯片技术（GG-H Array）检测和比较晶体上皮细胞在病态和健康状态下的基因表达差异，从而系统的鉴定出老年性白内障发病的相关基因,为临床研究有效预防老年性白内障的药物和方法提供思路。

Age-related cataract (ARC) is a complex disease involving genetic and enviromental factors. Most studies of this disease focused on the expression and modification of a single gene or protein, and because of the scarce source of healthy lens cells, it's common to use lens from individuals who are not in the same age group as control material. In this research, we use induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells induced from the ARC patient's lens epithelial cells (LECs) to differentiate healthy LECs. Thus, when hereditary factors are not considered, the healthy lens cells of the patient are generated which can be used as the optimal control for the study of abnormal lens cells. Furthermore, we will use the new generation Chip technology (GG-H Array) to test and compare the differnetial gene expressions between the abnormal and healthy LECs, in which way we can systematically identify the ARC-related genes that can be used for drug and physical therapy test to prevent and cure the disease in future.