Category Biology/Biotechnology

Researchers have developed a potential new treatment for the eye disease glaucoma that could replace daily eye drops and surgery with a twice-a-year injection to control the buildup of pressure in the eye. The researchers envision the injection being done as an office procedure that could be part of regular patient visits.

The possible treatment, which could become the first non-drug, non-surgical, long-acting therapy for glaucoma, uses the injection of a natural and biodegradable material to create a viscous hydrogel — a wa...

Researchers at Oregon State University are making key advances with a new type of optical sensor that more closely mimics the human eye’s ability to perceive changes in its visual field.

The sensor is a major breakthrough for fields such as image recognition, robotics and artificial intelligence...

Knocking out a protein known to stifle T cell activation on CAR T cells using the CRISPR/Cas9 technology enhanced the engineered T cells’ ability to eliminate blood cancers, according to new preclinical data from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center.

The findings will be presented as an oral presentation at the 62nd American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition on Dec. 7 (abstract 554).

The team knocked out the CD5 gene — which encodes for the CD5 protein on the surface of T cells and can inhibit their activation — on CAR T cells using CRISPR-Cas9 and infused them back into mice with T- and B-cell leukemia or lymphoma...

Medication used to treat a range of inflammatory diseases may be less safe than previously thought. Glucocorticoids are steroids widely prescribed to treat a range of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. While high doses of steroids are known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, the impact of lower doses is unknown. A study published in PLOS Medcine by Mar Pujades-Rodriguez at Leeds University and colleagues suggests that even low doses of glucocorticoid may increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

To quantify glucocorticoid dose-dependent cardiovascular risk, researchers analyzed medical records of 87,794 patients diagnosed with 6 different immune-mediate inflammatory diseases receiving care from 389 United Kingdom primary care clinics in 1998-2017...