Retinal tissue may degenerate for a number of reasons. Among them are: artery or vein occlusion, diabetic retinopathy, R.L.F./R.O.P. or disease (usually hereditary). Retinitis pigmentosa, retinoschisis, lattic degeneration, and macular degeneration are characterized by progressive types of retinal degeneration.
Ocugen, Inc. and the University of Colorado today announced exclusive license agreements that allow for Ocugen to continue developing two drug candidates for the treatment for ophthalmology indications, and that one of the assets, OCU100, recombinant lens epithelium derived growth factor 1-326 (LEDGF1-326), received orphan-drug status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a rare eye disease.
New research presented this week at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology conference in Orlando, Florida suggests that regular grape consumption may play a role in eye health by protecting the retina from deterioration.
The W.M. Keck Foundation's Medical Research Program has presented a grant for $1 million to Angelique Louie, a professor and vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Moderate aerobic exercise helps to preserve the structure and function of nerve cells in the retina after damage, according to an animal study appearing February 12 in The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest exercise may be able to slow the progression of retinal degenerative diseases.
Gene therapies developed by University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine researchers have worked to correct different forms of blindness. While effective, the downside to these approaches to vision rescue is that each disease requires its own form of gene therapy to correct the particular genetic mutation involved, a time consuming and complex process.
For a few years now optogenetics has been seen as a very promising therapy for progressive blindness, for example when it is a result of retinal degeneration.
Based on a ranking list that was established by the EU Scientific Evaluation Committee, the E-Rare funding bodies recommended the European young investigators network for Usher syndrome coordinated by Dr. Kerstin Nagel-Wolfrum from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz for funding. Out of 82 submitted projects, EUR-USH was among the 11 excellent scientific projects that were chosen after a competitive two-step scientific evaluation by peers. In October 2013, researchers held their kick-off meeting in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Nicolas G. Bazan, MD, PhD, Boyd Professor and Director of the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence, has been awarded the Professor Miroslaw M. Mossakowski Medal by the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Research led by physician-scientists at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has produced a breakthrough discovery in diagnosing retinitis pigmentosa, a blinding disease that affects about 1 in 4,000 people in the United States.
You might not think to look to a urine test to diagnose an eye disease. But a new Duke University study says it can link what is in a patient's urine to gene mutations that cause retinitis pigmentosa, or RP, an inherited, degenerative disease that results in severe vision impairment and often blindness. The findings appear online in the Journal of Lipid Research.
Professor Hannes Lohi's research group at the University of Helsinki and Folkh-lsan Research Center, Finland, has identified a mutation in CNGB1 gene, causing progressive retinal atrophy (PRA) in the Phalene and Papillon dog breeds.
Investigators at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School have published the most thorough description of gene expression in the human retina reported to date. In a study published today in the journal BMC Genomics, Drs. Michael Farkas, Eric Pierce and colleagues in the Ocular Genomics Institute at Mass. Eye and Ear reported a complete catalog of the genes expressed in the retina.
GenSight Biologics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of ophthalmic therapeutics using gene therapy, announced today the closing of a €32 million Series A financing.
Vision scientists long have thought that lack of very long chain fatty acids in photoreceptor cells caused blindness in children with Stargardt type 3 retinal degeneration, an incurable eye disease. But researchers at the University of Utah's John A. Moran Eye Center have shown in a new study that lack of these fatty acids does not cause blindness, meaning that the search for the mechanism that robs sight from children with the disease must start anew.
Doctors may one day treat some forms of blindness by altering the genetic program of the light-sensing cells of the eye, according to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Independent clinical trials, including one conducted at the Scheie Eye Institute at the Perelman School of Medicine, have reported safety and efficacy for Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a congenital form of blindness caused by mutations in a gene (RPE65) required for recycling vitamin A in the retina. Inherited retinal degenerative diseases were previously considered untreatable and incurable.
Light-sensing cells in the eye rely on their outer segment to convert light into neural signals that allow us to see. But because of its unique cylindrical shape, the outer segment is prone to breakage, which can cause blindness in humans. A study published by Cell Press on January 22nd in the Biophysical Journal provides new insight into the mechanical properties that cause the outer segment to snap under pressure.
Independent clinical trials, including one conducted at the Scheie Eye Institute at the Perelman School of Medicine, have reported safety and efficacy for Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a congenital form of blindness caused by mutations in a gene (RPE65) required for recycling vitamin A in the retina.
Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in collaboration with researchers at the Salk Institute in California, have found for the first time that a specific protein is essential not only for maintaining a healthy retina in the eye, but also may have implications for understanding and possibly treating other conditions in the immune, reproductive, vascular and nervous systems, as well as in various cancers.
After years of basic research, scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) are increasingly able to understand the mechanisms underlying the human Usher syndrome and are coming ever closer to finding a successful treatment approach. The scientists in the Usher research group of Professor Dr. Uwe Wolfrum are evaluating two different strategies. These involve either the repair of mutated genes or the deactivation of the genetic defects using agents.
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