NEI to discuss research advances in regenerative medicine for eye disease at ARVO 2016

The National Eye Institute (NEI), part of NIH, is participating in the Inaugural Press Conference from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Annual Meeting (ARVO 2016), the largest gathering of eye and vision researchers in the world, attracting over 11,000 attendees from more than 75 countries. The press conference will feature major funders of eye and vision research, both public and private, who will outline the most promising science being presented at ARVO 2016.

NEI Director Paul A. Sieving, M.D., Ph.D. will discuss research advancing the NEI Audacious Goals Initiative (AGI), an NEI-funded effort to develop regenerative medicine for eye disease. The AGI is targeting diseases like glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration, which can cause blindness by destroying neurons of retina and their connections to the brain. He will also highlight progress in stem cell and gene therapies, as well as the work of AGI-grantees developing imaging tools that show the retina and optic nerve in unprecedented detail.

• Stem cells. Kapil Bharti, Stadtman Investigator at NEI, is among those presenting novel cell therapies for age-related macular degeneration.

• Gene editing. A new generation of gene therapies is moving beyond gene replacement. Several scientists at ARVO are harnessing CRISPR, the process by which bacteria recognize and destroy invading viruses, to edit and repair disease-causing mutations. For example, an NEI team has designed a CRISPR strategy aimed at rescuing vision in a mouse with retinal degeneration.

• Imaging technologies. Five AGI-funded projects are developing new technologies to noninvasively image cells of the eye in unprecedented detail. Several of the PIs for those projects are presenting at ARVO 2016.