Macular degeneration research is a very rich, varied and complex field at present. Some of these articles are fairly accessible, but please remember that most are aimed at academics. However, I hope that everyone can get a flavour of what’s going on.

3D-OCT in neovascular AMD – My Vision Test – OCT and other diagnostic tests used in macular degeneration go under the research microscope. 
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A COST-EFFECTIVENESS ANALYSIS OF THREE TREATMENTS … [Retina. 2009] – pegaptanib sodium and ranibizumab injections compared with photodynamic therapy (PDT) with verteporfin for the treatment of choroidal neovascularization secondary to age-related macular degeneration.

AAO: Genes Linked to Response in Macular Degeneration – in Meeting Coverage, AAO from MedPage Today – reactions to Lucentis may be linked to genes. Please note that this study is preliminary.

AAO: Photodynamic Therapy No Help in Treating Macular Degeneration – preliminary results indicate that PDT does not avoid the need for injections in wet AMD.

Acucela Data in Dry AMD to be Highlighted at the 8th International Symposium on Ocular Pharmacology and Therapeutics – Phase 2 clinical trials expected soon for dry AMD oral medication known as ACU-4429.

AMD in Japan – My Vision Test – study suggests that the incidence of late age-related macular degeneration is lower among Japanese people than among white people, but higher than among black people.

AMD Patients can benefit from cataract surgery and steroids – Anabolic Steroids Blog – iSteroids . com – at least, some MD patients can benefit, study indicates.

Artificial retina generates sight | R&D Mag

Association between dietary fat intake and age-rel… [Arch Ophthalmol. 2009] – PubMed result

Autologous transplantation of retinal pigment epithelium in age related macular degeneration – PubMed article, so fairly technical.

Avastin as Effective as Lucentis for Macular Degeneration | Macular Degeneration Support Canada

Blue light-filtering increases macular pigment, may protect against age-related vision loss

British surgeons using radiation beams to halt macular degeneration — Engadget – brachyotherapy is a way of targeting low-level radiation at problem cells in the eye. The treatment may be a cheaper, longer-term one than injections for wet macular degeneration.

Cataract surgery does not appear associated with worsening of age-related macular degeneration

Causes Of Aging And Degenerative Diseases – oxidative stress.

CiteULike: Cystatin C in macular and neuronal degenerations: Implications for mechanism(s) of Age-related Macular Degeneration

Determining the cause for death of photoreceptors could hold the key to stopping blinding disorders

Dietary Compound Score and Risk of Age-Related Macular Degeneration in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS)

Digital aberrometry enables high-resolution eye measurements – this is a diagnostic tool that may enable doctors to time treatments more accurately.

Discriminative Restraint of Retinal Angiogenesis by Targeting PI3 Kinase – Te Tellurium » Blog Archive

Ellex Medical Lasers awarded Government grant for macular degeneration – this could be an early stage treatment for MD, with funding from the government of Victoria, Australia.

Gene therapy improves vision – children and adults with Leber’s congenital amaurosis benefit from gene therapy, which may eventually be applied to other retinal conditions.

Intravitreal Shots Carry Risk of Persistent Glaucoma – in Meeting Coverage, AAO from MedPage Today

Intravitreal steroid for refractory diabetic macular edema – My Vision Test – treatment appears effective for at least 5 years – study.

Long-term high dose vitamin D well tolerated – Life Extension Newsletter – Austin, Tx, study suggests good level of safety for vitamin D treatment.

Louisville’s Potentia Pharmaceuticals sells drug to eye-care giant Alcon | courier-journal.com – drug may treat both dry and wet macular degeneration.

Lucentis therapy for pigment epithelium detachment in AMD – My Vision Test – hopeful research into a little-studied secondary condition to wet AMD. But please also refer to
Lucentis therapy ineffective for pigment epithelial detachment – My Vision Test

Macular Drusen and the Immune System

MacuSight® Receives Fast Track Designation From FDA for Perceiva? in Treatment of Diabetic Macular Edema

Molecular Sunglasses for Macular Degeneration – molecules may be able to rid people of drusen, the rubbish that collects in the eyes in macular degeneration.

New Treatment for Wet Age-Related Macular Degeneration in FDA Clinical Trials « VisiVite.Com – positive results for NeoVista Vidion ANV Therapy, a treatment for wet AMD in Phase 3 Clinical Trials.

New target in war against macular degeneration – FierceBiotech Research – MIT researchers are looking at damaging effects of Vitamin A derivative.

New therapy at TCD for diseases of retina | Vybes.com – researchers at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, find new drug delivery system is helpful for combatting neovascularisation, may be helpful in macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa.

Novel Funding Mechanism Speeds The Path Of Research – international team approach expected to bring together top stem cell researchers and speed up research. This affects macular degeneration and many other diseases.

Positive phase-1 clinical trial results for ISONEP in AMD – My Vision Test – promising treatmentfor wet AMD.

[PDF] Progress Toward Topical Therapy of AMD – advances in eye-drop treatments.

Safety implications of anti-VEGF therapies – My Vision Test

Some patients with AMD develop elevated pressure within the eye following anti-VEGF medications: Study – subjects of this research had no personal or family history of glaucoma.

Stargardt’s Disease and Vitamin A – a cautionary note.

Study finds lack of VEGF can cause defects similar to dry macular degeneration – Science Centric | News – researchers hope that this will help to clarify the causes of macular degeneration.

Survey shows that Americans lack significant knowledge of age-related vision problems | News Provider

UGR researchers provide early diagnosis of ARMD and keratitis – researchers at the University of Granada used two optical instruments to measure the optical quality of subjects’ eyes, found early warnings of eye conditions.

Update on Lucentis clinical trials for retinal vein occlusion – My Vision Test

VisionCare Implantable Telescope Technology Presentations Featured at Upcoming American Academy of Ophthalmology and Ophthalmology Innovation Summit Meetings | PR Newswire | Find Articles at BNET

Visual Impairment and quality of life in the Older European Population, the EUREYE study – Wiley InterScience :: JOURNALS :: Acta Ophthalmologica

A gene therapy treatment that stopped the breakdown of muscle in monkeys may lead to a build up of muscle too.  The goal of the study is to improve muscle weakness caused by multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and other neurodegenerative diseases.  Researchers used an engineered virus to transport a gene into the leg muscles of monkeys.  The transported gene causes cells to produce follistatin, which interferes with myostatin.  Myostatin breaks down muscle.  While this treatment is still in the early experimental stages, it potentially holds significant promise.  For more information, see ScienceDaily.

If you have a keen interest in Life Sciences topics, this is your week! We have included titles on genomics, gene therapy, drug development and other topics for this week’s selection of books.

Community pharmacy : symptoms, diagnosis and treatment RA427.9 R982	Essentials of medical genomics RB155 B879	Food regulation : law, science, policy, and practice KF3875 F742	Gene family targeted molecular design RM301.3 G45 G326
Gene therapy immunology RB155.8 G326	Genomics in drug discovery and development RM301.3 G45 S471	Handbook of probiotics and prebiotics QR171 I6 H236	Handbook of RNA biochemistry QP623 H236
Intellectual property rights and the life science industries :past, present and future K1401 D975	Introduction to plant physiology QK711.2 H796	Machine learning in bioinformatics QH324.2 M149	Microbiology : a system approach QR41.2 C874
Molecular & cell biology for dummies QH506 K89	Nuclear receptors in drug metabolism RM301.55 N964	Pharmacy and the U.S. health care system RA401 A3 P536	Prebiotics and probiotics QR171 I6 P922
Prediction of protein structures, functions, and interactions QP551 P923	Protein engineering handbook TP248.65 P76 P967	Single molecule dynamics in life science QH317 S617	Strategies for organic drug synthesis and design RS403 L473

In the hair transplant world, scientists are constantly looking for more advanced and efficient ways to treat hair loss.

In the latest issue of the Journal of Internal Medicine, a new research study was published: “A Rare Complication: New Hair Growth Around Healing Wounds.” This study is related to Dr. Mohebi’s personal research at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute on gene therapy techniques and wound healing and how it affected the growth of rats’ hair.

The journal study was about a man who had hair growth surrounding a healing wound at Guangxi Medical University in Nanning, China.

The doctors involved in the study mention an incident in which hair growth occurred around a wound during the process of wound healing. Hair growth after wound healing is an uncommon occurrence. This is the first time such an event had ever been recorded in scientific literature.

The doctors concluded that the wounds damaged the hair follicles and epidermis, but that it was possible for both to repair themselves if there was a suitable physical and chemical micro-environment. The doctors say that this new hypothesis may lead to new methods of managing hair loss, tissue engineering, and the regeneration of other organs.

At the laboratory of Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, and as part of my overall research, I did a major investigative study on hair growth as a byproduct of wound healing. On a few mice, after witnessing wound healing, to my delight, I found that some gene therapy techniques stimulated the hair growth.

My attention was on hair growth only and, coincidentally, our results matched other hair growth-wound healing studies, during 2005 to 2006. At the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Cotsarelis, along with his contemporaries, first made public a study on the relationship between wound healing and hair growth through activation of the molecular pathway WNT.

Other similar studies have called attention to the fact that hair restoration through tissue engineering, hair multiplication, and gene therapy might one day happen and that we just may have a breakthrough a lot sooner than we expected all these years.

It’s important to note rather recent breakthroughs in other cosmetic surgery fields, such as Dysport for wrinkles. For an online medical discussion about topics such as wound healing and hair growth and anti-aging solutions, try doing a Web search for more information.

Parsa Mohebi, M.D.

Medical Director

US Hair Restoration

French researchers have reported an advance toward curing the rare, inherited brain-wasting illness,  adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) using gene therapy.  ALD, made famous by the movie Lorenzo’s Oil, slowly strips away layers of fatty acids protecting nerve fibers in the brain.  Researchers used an experimental treatment that incorporated a deactivated version of the HIV virus.  The deactivated HIV virus was used to carry genes to the patients’ stem cells.  For more information, see Wired Science.

Regenerative medicine and Cross-border awards…

Gene Therapy Saves Donor Lungs: A technique using gene therapy on donor lungs before transplantation may be used to repair and save damaged lungs, making them potentially suitable for transplantation into patients.  The procedure involves first preserving the lungs at normal body temperature in a protective chamber called the Toronto XVIVO Lung Perfusion System, which continuously pumps a solution of oxygen, proteins and nutrients.  Next, adenovirus gene therapy is used to introduce the IL-10 cytokine gene into the lungs.  IL-10 helps to decrease inflammation, which would lead to improved health and function of the donor lungs and better outcome for the patient.

Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, the project leader at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, describes the rationale:

“It’s as if gene therapy turbocharges each individual cell to manufacture many more proteins in its own IL-10 factory.”

“This protein down-regulates or decreases the inflammatory potential of cells injured before and during the transplant process. It also has the capacity to turn down the recipient’s immune system which rejects the transplanted organ.”

The research study is reported in this week’s issue of Science, Translational Medicine.

A Platform to Test Cardiac Cell Therapy:  A model system for evaluating stem cell transplant in cardiac cell therapy to repair damaged heart tissue is described in this study by Drs. Peter Zandstra and Milica Radisic’s team at the University of Toronto.  Using their engineered heart tissue (EHT) as the analytical platform, they applied stem-cell derived cardiac cells and measured molecular and electrophysiological parameters of the EHT.  The system was verified as a predictive strategy to interrogate different cell transplantation conditions for the capacity to survive and functionally integrate into heart tissue.  This tool should help researchers accelerate development of cardiac cell therapy strategies and it can also provide mechanistic insight into the challenges of a successful transplant.  On a personalized medicine theme, an advantage of the system is that the EHTs are customizable and can be derived from individuals for patient specific testing prior to the actual treatment.  The study appears in this week’s edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Cross-border” Cancer Stem Cell Therapy Award: The Collaborative Partnership Program between the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and the Cancer Stem Cell Consortium (CSCC) in Canada have awarded two internationally recognized Canadian researchers with support to lead their respective cancer stem cell based therapy projects.

One project will develop agents to directly target leukemic stem cells that are resistant to current therapies.  This will be co-led by Dr. John Dick, Princess Margaret Hospital and Dr. Dennis Carson, University of California San Diego.

The other project will develop small molecules targeting cancer-initiating cells within solid tumor cancers and will be co-led by Dr. Tak Mak, Princess Margaret Hospital and Dr. Dennis Slamon, University of California, Los Angeles.

The awards offer each project up to $40 million (USD) over four years, with funding for the Canadian investigators contributed by Genome Canada and Canadian Institutes of Health Research through the CSCC and funding for the Californian investigators contributed by CIRM.

Congratulations to Drs. John Dick and Tak Mak!

Top 10:  The Scientist magazine ranked Dalhousie University in Halifax and the University of Toronto in the top 10 best places to work in academia outside of the U.S. Based on a web survey of scientists regarding job satisfaction, pay, research resources and relationships with their peers and management, Dalhousie ranked 5^th and U of T came in at 10^th place.  It is very nice to see Canadian institutions and our great research environment recognized by peers around the world.

There’s an organ shortage in this country and people have been clamoring to fix the situation for years. There’s been a lot of discussion about changing laws and other activities at the policy level that might facilitate organ donation. But there’s hope now that a breakthrough in science will increase the availability of at least one type of common organ donation.

Of all the lungs donated, over 80% are inflamed and unable to function normally, causing doctors to reject them before they have a chance to be transplanted. That’s a shame, because thousands of dying people are left waiting for the next set of functional lungs. But scientists have discovered that infusing lungs with the regulatory gene IL-10 prior to transplant can fix the inflammation and render the lungs usable again. During the process, the lungs are kept “breathing” in a glass chamber by pumping them with oxygen and nutrients. The gene therapy decreases the inflammatory process in the lungs while increasing blood flow.

Scientists have tested this therapy on pig and human lungs successfully. Next, clinical trials are expected to get underway. With any luck, we will soon be able to have a much larger supply of viable lungs available for transplant. It’s a better solution to the problem of inadequate organ donation than trying to change things through the political route.

Read more about this breakthrough in the London Times and the LA Times.

MEDICAL NEWS TODAY: In trying to better predict a patient’s response to chemotherapy, a team of investigators at the State University of New Jersey has identified a way to better manipulate a gene product to cause cancer cells to die. READ MORE>

Lots of info to search for in this new product.  It’s a lot to digest if you search for “Medgenics biopump”.  Here is one of the best decriptions I’ve found about the product.  Please click here for the diagram.  It is still in development so look for more information to come out if this biopump shows promise.   Advantages of this type of biopump is:  increased Efficacy, Improved Safety and Reduced Side Effects, Improving Patient Compliance and Quality of Life, Lowering Costs, and Extending Treatment to Under-treated Populations.  The biopump treatment is reversable

The Medgenics’ Biopump technology is a combination biological/device product.

(a) The first stage is the removal (harvesting) of a sliver of dermal tissue, called a micro-organ (2-3mm diameter x 30-40mm length), from beneath the patient’s skin. This procedure is performed under a local anaesthetic, is intended to be performed in a physician’s office and is minimally invasive, so as to encourage rapid healing with little or no scarring. Generally, more than one micro-organ will be harvested from the patient (typically 4-5).

(b-e) The micro-organ is processed outside the body using a non-immunogenic adeno-viral vector to introduce the appropriate gene into the tissue’s cells and cause the cells to produce the desired protein, thus converting it into a sustained-action Biopump.

(f-i) Tests are performed during processing to determine the daily protein production from each Biopump. The appropriate number of Biopumps is thereby determined and then subcutaneously implanted back into the patient after one to two weeks.  After implantation, Biopumps are designed to maintain protein levels in the blood within the therapeutic window for up to six months or more.

Medgenics believes this technology can be applied across the large and rapidly growing global protein therapy market including the following:

Condition	Protein therapy
Anemia	EPO
Hepatitis C	IFN-α
Growth failure/Muscular atrophy	hGH
Multiple sclerosis	IFN-β
Hemophilia	Factor VIII, Factor IX, Factor X
Arthritis	IL-1Ra
Wound healing	PDGF-BB
Obesity	Peptide YY3-36
Chronic pain	IL-10
Cancer recovery

Here is what Reuters said about the BioPump, click here.

G-CSF

Gene therapy has been successfully used to restore vision in patients suffering from a rare genetic disorder. The nature of this disorder means that the therapy is much more successful in children than adults.

Leber’s congenital amaurosis (LCA) causes sight to deteriorate beginning at birth and and resulting in complete blindness before the age of forty.

Children born with one form, LCA2, have defects in a gene called RPE65 that helps the retina’s light-sensing cells make rhodopsin, a pigment needed to absorb light. Without rhodopsin, the photoreceptor cells gradually die.

Gene therapy works by using a modified virus as a delivery system to get specific genes into specific areas. (Take a look at our article Is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Caused By A Virus? for some background about how viruses work explained in plain English). Researchers first tested the therapy on dogs and found they could partially restore sight by using a virus loaded with the RPE65 gene. Then the researchers conducted a limited study on six young adult humans, which also resulted in sight improvements.

But the Penn researchers knew from their studies in animals that children should improve even more because they have more intact retinal tissue than adults do. Today in an online paper in The Lancet, their team and collaborators in Europe report full study results for three of the adults they treated earlier and nine more patients, including four children ages 8 to 11. The children gained more light sensitivity than the adults did–their light sensitivity increased as much as four orders of magnitude, versus one–and they made far fewer mistakes in an obstacle course.

This is one of those good news/bad news stories.

The bad news:

• Older individuals with this disorder have lost more tissue, and therefore the therapy can be significantly less effective.
• This therapy only applies to blindness caused by a specific defective gene, and will not benefit someone suffering from any other type of blindness.

Now, the good news:

• Gene therapy sounds great in theory but has had few successes in real life applications. The success of this study will serve as boost to continue research into gene therapy.
• Other vision diseases are caused by genetic defects. In the near future it may be possible to do a simple blood test to determine which defective gene a child has and then apply the appropriate therapy to prevent a loss of vision from occurring in the first place.

There is a lot of excitement in the air because of the successful results. Take a look here to see a video of one of the patients, Cory Haas, breezing through an obstacle course a mere three months after therapy.

The LCA2 trials are a rare success for the field of gene therapy, which has also cured children with the immune disorder known as bubble boy disease. And they should pave the way for treating more vision disorders. “It’s an incredible launching pad to be able to target other diseases,” says Penn gene therapy researcher Jean Bennett, who led the study.

Showing that the LCA2 gene therapy treatment works best in children is “a big step” for inherited blindness, says geneticist Frans Cremers of Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands, who wrote an accompanying commentary in The Lancet. He notes that eight other vision diseases, including retinitis pigmentosa, have now been treated in mice and are ready to be tested in people. The challenge, he says, will be to expand genetic testing of people with blindness so as to find enough eligible patients for clinical trials of these rare disorders.

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CBS Evening News reported that there is good news for the more than 10 million Americans who suffer from some type of vision disorder. In an experimental gene therapy trial at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, researchers used DNA from a DNA bank to create a functioning gene that was missing in 12 patients who were legally blind. The gene was then injected into the eye with a thin needle, which created a missing protein inside the faulty retina, helping to restore vision.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the finding, published in the Lancet, suggests it may be possible to produce similar improvements in a much larger number of patients with retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. The participants had Leber’s congenital amaurosis, and were born with severely impaired vision, which typically deteriorates until patients “are totally blind.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that although the treatment did not restore normal sight in any participants, there was some improvement in all of them. Six participants reported enough vision to no longer be considered legally blind, while four children achieved significant recovery of vision.

According to Katherine High, a gene therapy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, all of the participants had mutations disabling a gene called RPE65 that produces a protein essential to vision, Bloomberg News reported. Study author Jean Bennett noted that patients improved on standard vision tests, such as reading eye charts, and their pupils had a much greater response when light was shined in their eyes after being treated.

The study showed that the youngest participant’s treated eye became 10,000 times more sensitive to light, as measured by the pupil’s ability to constrict, while the eyes of the adults became hundreds of times more sensitive, at best, thePhiladelphia Inquirer reported. And, although expectations for patients in their 20s were low, those patients “improved more than the researchers expected.”

The authors noted that the visual recovery noted in the children confirms the hypothesis that efficacy will be improved if treatment is applied before retinal degeneration has progressed, HealthDay reported. While patients younger than 20 had larger visual field recoveries than older patients, the study also showed that pupillary response…improved in the injected eye of all 11 patients tested. BBC News, the UK’s Telegraph, and AFP also covered the story.

Providing vision is the next step of using gene therapy to cure disease. File Photo: M. Karunakaran

A single jab of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments can make children with congenital blindness see, according to a new study.

Taking the next step towards using gene therapy to cure disease, the study conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, showed notable improvement in children with congenital blindness.

For the study, the researchers used gene therapy to safely improve vision in five children and seven adults with Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis (LCA). The greatest improvements occurred in the children, all of whom are now able to navigate a low-light obstacle course-a result that the researchers call “spectacular.” “This result is an exciting one for the entire field of gene therapy. This study reports dramatic results in restoring vision to patients who previously had no options for treatment. These findings may expedite development of gene therapy for more common retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration,” The Lancet quoted Dr. Katherine A. High, co-first author of the study as saying.

Although the patients did not attain normal eyesight, half of them (six of 12) improved enough that they might no longer be classified as legally blind. “The clinical benefits have persisted for nearly two years since the first subjects were treated with injections of therapeutic genes into their retinas,” said senior author Dr. Jean Bennett.

For Bennett, the results build on nearly 20 years of gene studies on hereditary blindness, starting with pioneering work in mice and dogs. “These remarkable results have laid a foundation for applying gene therapy not only to other forms of childhood-onset retinal disease, but also to more common retinal degenerations,” she added.

“Children who were treated with gene therapy are now able to walk and play just like any normally sighted child. They can also carry out classroom activities without visual aids,” said co-first author Dr. Albert M. Maguire.

The study was published in The Lancet.

Not too long ago The New York Times reported a “burst of recent research aimed” at helping the blind see. Their article, rife with blurbs about ingenious procedures—like the first osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis in the United States, an operation in which a patient’s extracted tooth helps fashion a replacement cornea—largely focused on the growing success of artificial retinas, which involve electrodes implanted in the eye and tiny cameras mounted on glasses.

But there’s even more exciting and related research. The September 19^th International Symposium on Artificial Vision welcomed many optimistic manufacturers of retinal implants, some expecting official approval for their devices by 2011, according to one article. Many attending scientists were from Germany, where there’s been considerable progress in the field of artificial vision, but The Boston Retinal Implant Project also presented their work—check out this spiffy interactive model of their implant.

These largely technological advances complement progress of a more organic nature. First there’s the celebrated study published in Nature, detailing how University of Washington researchers used gene therapy to enhance color vision in color-blind squirrel monkeys. Less reported was a study in the current issue of PLoS Biology describing how a SUNY Upstate Medical University team used pluripotent cells to grow entirely new and functioning eyes in blind tadpoles. Applying such biological strategies to humans will require much more research, but considered together these recent and varied developments are genuine cause for hope.

Methods for identifying a subject at increased risk for developing AMD by determining the presence of protective genotypes at either the BF/C2 locus and at the CFH locus.

The NCI Laboratory of Genomic Diversity is seeking statements of capability or interest from parties interested in collaborative research to further develop, evaluate, or commercialize functional or genetic tests on complement genes and proteins. Please contact Kathleen Higinbotham at 301-846-5465 for more information.

http://pharmalicensing.com/public/outlicensing/view/4468

Color scheme: To assess color vision in monkeys after gene therapy treatment, scientists adapted a version of a test commonly used to screen colorblind people. If the monkey correctly identifies the red spot on a grey background by touching it on the screen, it gets a juice reward. Credit: Neitz Laboratory

green color-blind, can attain humanlike color vision when injected with the gene for a human photoreceptor.  The research, performed in adult animals, suggests that the visual system is much more flexible than previously thought–the monkeys quickly learned to use the new sensory information.  Researchers hope these results will also hold true for humans afflicted with color blindness and other visual disorders, expanding the range of blinding diseases that might be treated with gene therapy.  Read on:   http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23483/

I’ve had a very busy week with being a tour guide and all, but now I have time to put down some of the stuff that I’ve found/has been on my mind the last couple of weeks:

All I can think is TETSUOOOOO!!!!

Hilarious Bird/Swine/Zombie Flu epidemic graphic

A little late, but gene therapy has allowed monkeys to see colors.

And for something completely different, poet Matthew Zapruder has a really interesting article on his take on learning poetry.

On its front page, the New York Times reported that 38 patients from the US, Europe, and Mexico are beginning an intensive three-year research project involving electrodes surgically implanted in their eyes, a camera on the bridge of their noses, and a video processor strapped to their waists, in a burst of recent research aimed at one of science’s most-sought-after holy grails: making the blind see.

Researchers involved in the project, the artificial retina, say they have plans to develop the technology to allow people to read, write and recognize faces. Meanwhile, other approaches to treating blindness include gene therapy, which has produced improved vision in people who are blind from one rare congenital disease. Stem cell research is considered promising, although far from producing results, and other studies involve a light-responding protein and retinal transplants.

From Science (subscription required):

Squirrel monkeys can now see your true colors, thanks to gene therapy. Researchers have given the colorblind primates full color vision as adults by injecting their eyes with a human gene. The result raises questions about how the brain understands color, and it could eventually lead to gene-therapy treatments for colorblindness and other visual disorders in humans.
…
Seeking a possible treatment for the human condition, vision scientist Jay Neitz and colleagues at the University of Washington, Seattle, assembled six adult squirrel monkeys, four colorblind males and two female controls. The researchers tested them daily for a year, using a computer program that presented the primates with colorful clumps of dots on a screen of similarly varied gray dots (see video). The results established each monkey’s color vision, revealing that the female controls could see colors as a normal human would, while the male monkeys could not distinguish green and red clumps from the gray background. The team then injected the retinas of two of the colorblind monkeys with a virus that introduced the human gene for the red-detecting pigment in cone cells.
…
Twenty weeks after the gene therapy, however, the monkeys began to spot red and green dots in the computer color tests, and soon after they were regularly acing the trials. “That’s when we broke out the champagne,” says a still-surprised Neitz. Now, 2 years later, the monkeys remain able to distinguish all colors, almost on par with their female counterparts. Neitz attributes the monkeys’ adaptability to the fact that colorblind animals still have color-processing circuitry in their brains. The introduced gene simply gives them the ability to feed new information into the circuitry, “hijacking” a pathway previously used by blues and yellows for reds and greens as well.

Since the 1960’s a new form of modern medicine has begun to appear from the ashes. This new breakthrough in medical science is Gene Therapy; a very beneficial and radical new treatment. Although still in the works, Gene Therapy has a bright future in the art of medicine.

Gene Therapy is a complex science with many parts to it. Many parts have been answered but there still remains those that aren’t and questions that are just being thought of. Some of these first questions were brought up and worked on by a scientist named Paul Berg. After years of studying, he put his research to test the possibility of splicing genes, which he successfully did. His reasoning for these experiments was to find a way to “manufacture” genes to the benefit of stopping certain viruses. Other pioneers of genetic therapy were Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer who studied recombinant DNA technology. Their research was to eventually create a new DNA molecule by the process of cleaving and rejoining different DNA strands. After these advances started to be made, some scientists realized possible risks of their studies. These men eventually decided it was necessary to get together with as many scientists from around the world to discuss the pro’s and con’s of their studies. A Short while after this conference, another of the same type was held which led to the creation of restrictions and other such rules that were to be followed in the study of genetics.

The first scientists to start genetic research thought it would take decades to make advances that were noteworthy. This turned out to be false. By the year 1971 Paul Berg successfully was able to splice genes. Even further with the research was done throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. After going unnoticed with the media, due to few advances, gene therapy hit the spotlights again in the 1990’s with many great strides. In January of 1998, scientists made the discovery that when cells divide their DNA strand gets shorter and shorter eventually reaching a point where the cell no longer replicates. With this discovery scientists are now working with enzymes to prevent the deterioration of the DNA strand by the process of telomerase. Telomerase will allow the cells to divide indefinitely and healthier in the body. This process is what cancer cells do and with this knowledge researchers may be able to unlock the ways to fighting cancer effectively. Another discovery made in 1998, proved that the brain does in fact grow new cells (in certain and controlled conditions). Up to this point it was thought to be contrary to this fact. A major discovery in the field of gene therapy again happened in 1999, in animal testings; scientists successfully added a chromosome into a mouse which passed it on to the next generation. With this breakthrough, researches have opened the gate to possible testing for the prevention of ailments in humans and other animals. All this has been accomplished way ahead of the expectations of many in this field of study. One Doctor put it in these words, “A decade ago if you had asked, would it be possible to manipulate a higher cognitive function like learning and memory by changing a single molecule? Most scientists would have looked at you
as if you were crazy!”(Malenka 58)

Much of the research that has been discussed so far is still in “the works”, but not far off, as you may know. Successful experiments with altered chromosomes in mice was done to develop herds of genetically altered animals whose milk can be used and then cultured for producing a vast range of medically beneficial drugs. Another possibility with the altering of chromosomes, in the mice, makes it possible for brain restoration. Knowing that the brain can regenerate itself we may now be able to add genetically altered neurons that have been lost over the years. The medical world could now have the power to increase a persons memory, IQ or even prevent diseases such as Alzheimer’s. One may think that all this gene “stuff” doesn’t affect them but that is where they are wrong; many of the everyday foods people eat aregenetically altered. Examples of this would be: 26% of U.S. corn crop was grown from genetically changed seeds in 1998. Also that year 30% of U.S. cows are injected with the recombinant bovine growth hormone which boosts production of milk. This hormone is made from genetically engineered bacteria. In 1998, 35% of the soybean crop was grown from seeds that had been genetically engineered. 75% of all cheeses contain chymosin, which is produced with bacteria that have been genetically engineered. Also 42% of cotton was grown from genetically engineered seeds. (Kluger 42) Another positive breakthrough would be from the manipulation of embryonic stem cells (Es cells). This technology would allow us to grow infinite numbers of cells and manipulate what they would grow into so they could be injected into infected parts of patients. Diseases such as congenitive heart failure, diabetes, repairing amaged lung cells or the blood of leukemia patients could be altered by Es cells. Other genetically transmitted diseases could also be stopped during pregnancy before the child is fully developed or born.

The future of genetic therapy is all in the hands of the people. The knowledge of its potentials are still trying be unlocked. Many things such as the full understanding of Es cells and the potential to alter humans and make a super being are all being researched vigorously. With this research many great possibilities lie in the hands of researchers. The future of this technology is uncertain due to the fact that scientists and researchers still know little of its full possibilities and consequences. Much safety research is needed to prove to scientists and the world that genetic therapy can be safe and effective way in treating ailments. Since its beginning the study of genetic therapy has been fast developing. Every day advances are made towards the good of man. All this research has been for the betterment of people, whether it be for treating ailments or making changes for the advancement of the human body. Genetic therapy has so far shown that it is a beneficial medical treatment that can be looked forward to being used in the near future.