Lehigh Valley Center For Sight

Audio version: Ophthotech is a biopharmaceutical company committed to developing therapeutics and gene therapy solutions to treat retinal diseases. The company is aggressively pursuing therapies for orphan conditions like retinitis pigmentosa (RP), Stargardt disease , and Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), as well as common indications such as wet and dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Most impressive, the company is taking on a multi-track strategy that includes retinal gene-therapy development, including delivery of over-sized genes and design of a two-step process of gene knockdown and replacement for autosomal dominant conditions. While these are the scientific challenges that keep most retinal researchers awake at night, Ophthotech thrives on them and sees them as opportunities to meet significant unmet medical needs for people with retinal diseases. Kourous Rezaei, MD, the company’s chief medical officer, says his team’s clinical and drug-development expertise, as...

The Foundation Fighting Blindness has announced funding for seven new research projects to advance the development of treatments and cures for retinal degenerative diseases. Each project will receive a total of $300,000 over a three-year period. The grants were selected through FFB’s annual call for research proposals from individual investigators. Seventy scientists submitted requests for funding. Applications were reviewed by FFB’s Scientific Advisory Board , which is comprised of the world’s leading retinal experts. “Many of the funded research projects are cross-cutting, meaning they have the potential to benefit a broad range of people, independent of the mutated genes causing their retinal diseases,” says Stephen Rose, PhD, FFB’s chief scientific officer. “Also, some projects address a critical gap in our understanding and modeling of disease, and have potential to move the field forward in a significant way.” Here are summaries of the seven new projects: Gene Therapy to Pres...

Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming solar eclipse and how to safely view the eclipse without losing vision from solar retinopathy! A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, and the Moon casts its shadow, known as the umbra, on Earth. Partial or total eclipses occur somewhere on Earth about every 18 months as you can see here in in this photo showing solar eclipses since 2001. Photo credit: Wikipedia On August 21, the entire United States will experience at least a partial eclipse, but only those in what is known as the path of totality will witness a total solar eclipse. The eclipse will occur quite quickly, and even those within the path of totality will see, at most, 2 minutes and 40 seconds of the total solar eclipse. So how can you safely view the solar eclipse? Well, if you are IN the path of totality you will first witness a partial eclipse, and then the short time period of the total eclipse, and then the partial eclipse ...

Kristin McDonald For the last few years Kristin McDonald, a former actress and television spokeswoman, has been applying her make-up without the aid of her eyes due to retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that reduces a person’s peripheral vision until all that is left is a pinpoint of sight. Today, she is in a first stage study that is offering her and others hope that the injection of stem cells might be the mechanism that could slow, and maybe even halt the effects of this horrible disease. Discovery Eye Foundation helped support many of the preliminary translational studies necessary to bring the clinical trial to the FDA and get this exciting, novel approach to the patients. I am Tom Sullivan, Ambassador of Vision for the Discovery Eye Foundation, and I was rocked when my phone rang recently and I heard the sound of my friend Kristin crying. “What’s the matter?” I asked with real concern. Her tears were quickly replaced by laughter, joyous laughter. “It might be working,” she sa...

Hosted by the Foundation Fighting Blindness and Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University, the Innovation Summit for Retinal Cell and Gene Therapy has emerged as one of the most essential events for researchers and companies developing treatments and cures for retinal degenerative diseases. In its fifth year, the Innovation Summit featured 40 presentations from industry experts from around the world. More than 250 people were in attendance. The event was held on April 27, the day before the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) in Honolulu. Spark Therapeutics, Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation (AGTC), REGENXBIO, and Nightstar Therapeutics sponsored the event. Summit co-hosts were Casey’s Mark Pennesi, MD, PhD, and Trevor McGill, PhD, and Steven Rose, PhD, FFB’s chief scientific officer. While the ARVO meeting is the world’s largest eye research conference with about 12,000 attendees, the Innovation Summit prov...