Scientists Turn To Mice for Help to Treat Glaucoma
Glaucoma is a devastating disease of the eye that is typically associated with aging. It’s the leading cause of blindness, along with cataracts, affecting 70 million people worldwide. Specifically, glaucoma comes from the deterioration of retinal nerve ganglion cells. There is currently no cure.
Now, researchers at the University of California, San Diego are using the component to trial gene therapies for the degenerative eye disease.
The glowing yellow points are ganglion cells that have been targeted with a harmless virus, so they can be used as a carrier to deposit normal genes into the cells, replacing defective, disease- causing ones.
“Gene expression was broadly distributed in the whole retina, suggesting this gene-delivery system could effectively cover all parts of retinal ganglion cells,” says Wonkyu Ju, co-author of the paper.
Wonkyu Ju, Keunyoung Kim and Mark Ellisman created a confocal microscope image that shows a virus carrying a gene tagged with green fluorescent protein introduced into the eyes of 7-month-old mice.
The study investigated whether a nonpathogenic virus could effectively deliver therapeutic genes to retinal ganglion cells. These cells are destroyed in glaucoma, causing progressive and irreversible vision loss.
Image areas where the GFP has been produced glow yellow, indicating broad
delivery to the retinal ganglion cells. The blue dots are produced by a marker for retinal ganglion cells called Brn3a.“The research has suggested that targeting these cells with gene therapy designed to prevent their death might slow progression of the disease,” said Robert N. Weinreb, MD, director of both the Hamilton Glaucoma Center and Shiley Eye Institute, and a co-author of the paper.
