NEI Research News

Scientists reverse age-related vision loss, glaucoma damage in mice.

The National Eye Institute (NEI) Audacious Goals Initiative (AGI) is exploring the possibility that the natural world holds the keys to restorative therapies that might unlock regenerative powers in humans.

A team of researchers has identified networks of genes that allow neurons to regenerate in animals like zebrafish.

NEI-funded scientists are hacking the zebrafish’s innate regenerative capacity to learn how to treat human disease.

A National Eye Institute-funded study has identified a type of stem cell called a neural progenitor cell, in a region of the optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain.

Researchers have shown for the first time that when one optic nerve in the eye is damaged, as in glaucoma, the opposite optic nerve comes to the rescue by sharing its metabolic energy.

Researchers have developed a neural network capable of recognizing retinal tissues during the process of their differentiation in a dish.

After a brain injury, cells that normally nourish nerves may actually kill them instead, a new NYU study in rodents finds. This “reactive” phenomenon may be the driving factor behind neurodegenerative diseases like glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness.

Using human stem cell models, researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine found they could analyze deficits within cells damaged by glaucoma, with the potential to use this information to develop new strategies to slow the disease process.

Neuroscientists at the University of South Florida have become the first to definitively prove pressure in the eye is sufficient to cause and explain glaucoma.