macular degeneration news from FierceBioResearcher

Activating the Robo4 protein in mice helped them to develop working blood vessels and ward off the kind of common physical damage that leads to blindness. And the work may point to new therapies for Read more...

The University of Miami has recruited a pair of top geneticists from Duke after putting up more than $10 million to cover their start-up costs in a new lab. About 20 researchers will move with Jeffery Vance and Margaret Pericak-Vance, a husband-and-wife team credited with the discovery of genes associated with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and macular degeneration. They plan to continue their work in Miami. Dr. Pericak-Vance has been the Director of the Center for Humans Genetics at Duke …

Read more...

Immunologists studying T-cells say that the presence of even a small amount of virus can quickly turn on the T-cells, which hunt them down and kill them. Researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia say that "antigen presenting" proteins recognize the virus, attach to the virus and make it visible to the immune system, which dispatches T-cells to kill the virus. …

Read more...

Researchers were able to grow new cells from embryonic stem cells and used them to slow vision loss in rats with a genetic ailment comparable to macular degeneration. The scientists--Raymond D. Lund, who had been at the University of Utah's John A. Moran Eye Center in Salt Lake City, and Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology--say that their work demonstrates the utility of using new cells to substitute for the failing photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye. Failing photoreceptor …

Read more...

Stem cell research should be encouraged
Advanced Cell Technology has taken a lot of heat for its work that purports to show researchers can create new embryonic stem cell lines without destroying the embryo. That remains more of a …

Read more...