Research News
Seven BrightFocus grantees had their research chosen as a “Hot Topic” by the ARVO Scientific Program Committee. Read about their exciting work.
Download the summer 2015 issue of our macular degeneration newsletter to learn about a new AMD treatment that is close to human clinical trials, how cataract surgery affects AMD, AREDS vitamins. risk reduction strategies for AMD, and more.
BrightFocus Foundation seeks to save sight and mind by funding innovative research worldwide and by promoting better health through education.
In an online report published April 2, 2014, BrightFocus researchers Matthew Campbell, PhD, Sarah Doyle, PhD, and Peter Humphries, PhD, and their teams, have reported from studies in mice that the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-18 (IL-18) can prevent choroidal neovascularization (CNV) formation—the fragile, leaky blood vessels forming on the retina that are the hallmark of wet AMD—and is not toxic to the retinal pigment epithelium.
Recent BrightFocus grantees, Vinit B. Mahajan, MD, PhD, and co-investigator Jessica M. Skeie, PhD, of the University of Iowa mapped the location and quantities of some 4,403 different proteins expressed in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and choroid of the healthy human eye. This molecular map now provides clues as to why certain areas of the choroid are more sensitive to certain diseases, as well as where to target therapies and why.
There’s been a major discovery from Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). In mice studies, researchers have shown that fibroblast growth factor (FGF) proteins, a family of “signaling proteins” involved in tissue formation, can be independently manipulated to bring about desired results in individual organs without disrupting the organism as a whole.