Macular Degeneration News and Research

Latest Macular Degeneration News and Research

Newtricious secures backing of a consortium of investors

Life Sciences company Newtricious has secured the backing of a consortium of investors who will help it to continue to develop its first products focusing on the maintenance of health in people at risk for chronic diseases such as macular degeneration and cardiovascular illnesses.

17 Jan 2012

ForSight VISION4 to receive first milestone payment for Lucentis drug delivery device

Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, today announced it will make its first milestone payment to ForSight VISION4, Inc. as part of an exclusive license agreement to develop the company's investigational drug delivery device, designed to provide sustained delivery of Lucentis (ranibizumab).

13 Jan 2012

Grapes offer dramatic protection against age-related macular degeneration

Can eating grapes slow or help prevent the onset of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a debilitating condition affecting millions of elderly people worldwide? Results from a new study published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine suggest this might be the case. The antioxidant actions of grapes are believed to be responsible for these protective effects.

12 Jan 2012

Ocular drug delivery: DSM awarded membership in PANOPTES EU Funded Consortium

DSM, a global leader in biomedical materials sciences, today announced that it is contributing proprietary knowledge in the preparation of tailored amino acid-based polymers and offering use of processing facilities that will produce an innovative step change in the sustained delivery of drug molecules. The PANOPTES consortium’s goal is to research and develop novel drug delivery technology for the posterior eye segment. This partnership further validates the innovative properties of DSM’s polyesteramide (PEA) biomaterials as a superior drug delivery technology.

12 Jan 2012

Visual rehabilitation to continue to increase in near future

Visual rehabilitation will continue to increase in importance in the near future, particularly because the number of older patients is rising. Susanne Trauzettel-Klosinski summarizes the present state of knowledge in the current issue of the Deutsches Ärzteblatt International.

12 Jan 2012

HDC, NeoGenomics sign worldwide licensing agreement to develop LDT

Health Discovery Corporation, a molecular diagnostics leader in the use of patent protected advanced mathematical techniques for personalized medicine, has entered into an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with NeoGenomics, Inc. for laboratory developed tests in the Field of hematopoietic and solid tumor cancers excluding breast cancer, which was previously licensed to Quest Diagnostics and Smart Personalized Medicine and excluding cancer of the retina which was previously committed to Retinalyze, LLC.

9 Jan 2012

Clearside Biomedical receives $4M venture capital investment

Technology developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University for delivering drugs and other therapeutics to specific locations in the eye provides the foundation for a startup company that has received a $4 million venture capital investment.

6 Jan 2012

PEDF may suppress brain from tumor-induced damage, metastasis

Scientists are one step closer to repairing the damage caused by brain metastasis, a major challenge in cancer treatment, according to data published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

4 Jan 2012

Dendrimers offers a new way to treat age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa

Hitching a ride into the retina on nanoparticles called dendrimers offers a new way to treat age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. A study by investigators at Mayo Clinic, Wayne State University and Johns Hopkins Medicine shows that steroids attached to the dendrimers target the damage-causing cells associated with neuroinflammation, leaving the rest of the eye unaffected and preserving vision.

14 Dec 2011

Potential nanoparticle treatment for macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa

Hitching a ride into the retina on nanoparticles called dendrimers offers a new way to treat age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. A collaborative research study among investigators at Wayne State University, the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine shows that steroids attached to the dendrimers targeted the damage-causing cells associated with neuroinflammation, leaving the rest of the eye unaffected and preserving vision.

14 Dec 2011

King's College London submits first clinical grade xeno-free hES cell lines to the UKSCB

Stem cell scientists at King's College London will announce they have submitted to the UK Stem Cell Bank (UKSCB) their first clinical grade human embryonic stem (hES) cell lines that are free from animal-derived products, known as 'xeno-free' stem cells.

7 Dec 2011

Bayer, Regeneron commence EYLEA Phase 3 clinical trial for wet AMD in China

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Bayer HealthCare today announced that they have initiated a Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating the efficacy and safety of EYLEA (aflibercept) Injection in the neovascular form of age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) in China.

28 Nov 2011

Regeneron’s Eylea for treating age related macular degeneration gets FDA nod

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has received marketing approval for their eye drug - Eylea, an injection meant to treat a common cause of blindness in older people. Eylea can be used to treat “wet” age-related macular degeneration. The only other drug approved for the condition is Lucentis from Roche, which was approved in 2006.

21 Nov 2011

FDA approves EYLEA for treatment of wet Age-related Macular Degeneration

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved EYLEA (aflibercept) Injection, known in the scientific literature as VEGF Trap-Eye, for the treatment of patients with neovascular (wet) Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) at a recommended dose of 2 milligrams every four weeks for the first 12 weeks, followed by 2 mg every eight weeks.

19 Nov 2011

Regeneron receives FDA approval for Eylea to treat wet AMD

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Eylea (aflibercept) to treat patients with wet (neovascular) age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision loss and blindness in Americans ages 60 and older.

18 Nov 2011

New protein in the fruit fly eye may shed light on neurodegenerative diseases

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and collaborators have discovered a powerful new protein in the eye of the fruit fly that may shed light on blinding diseases and other sensory problems in humans.

18 Nov 2011

Lower glycemic index diet may delay onset of AMD-like lesions

Feeding older mice a lower glycemic index (GI) diet consisting of slowly-digested carbohydrates delays the onset of age-related, sight-threatening retinal lesions, according to a new study from the Laboratory for Nutrition and Vision Research at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University.

14 Nov 2011

AHAF: Requests for ADR research grants increase by 33% this year

The American Health Assistance Foundation (AHAF), a nonprofit organization funding innovative research through its Alzheimer's Disease Research (ADR) program, today announced that the number of scientists seeking ADR research grants through its annual application process increased by 33% this year.

11 Nov 2011

Low-grade inflammatory processes drive development of osteoarthritis

In a study to be published online Nov. 6 in Nature Medicine, investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown that the development of osteoarthritis is in great part driven by low-grade inflammatory processes.

8 Nov 2011

Promedior's Pentraxin-2 effectively suppresses liver fibrosis

Promedior, Inc., a clinical stage biotechnology company developing novel therapies to treat fibrotic, inflammatory and neovascular diseases, today announced that data from preclinical studies of Serum Amyloid P (Pentraxin-2) will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD 2011), being held November 4-8, 2011, in San Francisco, CA.

3 Nov 2011