News by Subject Medicine & Health

As a newborn mammal opens its eyes for the first time, it can already make visual sense of the world around it. But how does this happen before they have experienced sight?

A form of gene therapy protects optic nerve cells and preserves vision in mouse models of glaucoma, according to research supported by NIH's National Eye Institute. The findings suggest a way forward for developing neuroprotective therapies for glaucoma, a leading cause of visual impairment and blindness.

Mount Sinai researchers uncover a potential pathway for treatment that can prevent blindness.

Imagine meeting a friend on the street, and imagine that with every step they take, your visual system has to process their image from scratch in order to recognize them. Luckily, our visual system is able to retain information obtained in motion, thereby presenting us with a consistent picture of our surroundings. These are the findings of a study conducted by SISSA, in collaboration with the Penn and KU Leuven and published in Nature Communications, which explains the neuronal underpinnings of this phenomenon.

Research conducted at the Sharon Eccles Steele Center for Translational Medicine (SCTM) at the University of Utah's John A. Moran Eye Center explains why people carrying a block of genetic variants strongly associated with the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) may develop the disease and identifies a potential therapeutic pathway for slowing or even reversing disease progression.

The latest investigations into a promising new genetic test for glaucoma - the leading cause of blindness worldwide - has found it has the ability to identify 15 times more people at high risk of glaucoma than an existing genetic test. The study, just published in JAMA Ophthalmology, builds on a long-running international collaboration between Flinders University and the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute and other research partners around the world to identify genetic risk factors for glaucoma.

A preclinical study offers hope for treatment of uveal melanoma, a rare and deadly cancer of the eye. A small molecule inhibitor has been identified that dampens the potent drivers of this tumor. In mouse models, the inhibitor strongly limited primary disease in the eye and metastatic tumor dissemination to the liver, and animals survived longer, without overt side effects.