New Ways of Treating Eye Bacterium

“Scientists from Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology have used the power of new genomic technology to discover that microbes that commonly infect the eye have special, previously unknown properties. These properties are predicted to allow the bacterium -- Streptococcus pneumoniae -- to specifically stick to the surface of the eye, grow, and cause damage and inflammation,” reports Science Daily. “Researchers are now using this information to develop new ways to treat and prevent this bacterium, which is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. Their findings are in the current issue of Nature Communications.” Read more.

Scientists Grow Corneal Tissue

“A team of scientists from several Harvard-affiliated centers in Boston, MA, has grown human corneal tissue in mice using adult-derived human stem cells. They believe their breakthrough will bring hope to people who have impaired or lost vision due to burns, chemical injuries, or eye diseases that damage the cornea,” reports Medical News Today. “Dr. Bruce Ksander, associate professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, and also of Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary, and colleagues write about their work - the first known example of tissue grown from a human stem cell - in the journal Nature. The cells that make up the cornea - the transparent ‘window’ of tissue at the front of the eye - are constantly damaged from blinking and exposure to the outside world. To repair the damage, the eye maintains a small number of ‘limbal stem cells’ at the edge of the cornea.” Read more.

Contact Lenses Deliver Glaucoma Treatment

"For nearly half a century, contact lenses have been proposed as a means of ocular drug delivery that may someday replace eye drops, but achieving controlled drug release has been a significant challenge," according to Select Science. "Researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are one step closer to an eye drop-free reality with the development of a drug-eluting contact lens designed for prolonged delivery of latanoprost, a common drug used for the treatment of glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide." Read more.

CLs to Deliver Glaucoma Med

Researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology, Boston Children's Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have moved closer to developing a drug-eluting contact lens designed for prolonged delivery of latanoprost, commonly used to treat glaucoma. Using FDA-approved materials, the researchers created the CLs by encapsulating latanoprost-polymer films in hydrogel. Their findings are described online and will be in the January 2014 printed issue of Biomaterials. Read the NIH abstract. Read a PDF version of the study at Science Direct.

Only a day ago, researchers announced that they had mapped the molecular underpinnings of glaucoma. Read the blog post.