lagunita
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Senior Boarder
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Karma: -5
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gene therapy working for retinal eye diseases - 2008/06/19 02:54
A recent breakthrough in a gene
therapy clinical trial for a rare
form of retinitis pigmentosa (an
retainal eye disease) in the US
has made the US network evening
news as well as newspapers. This
breakthrough was funded by the
Foundation Fighting Blindness (FF , where
you can find details (www.blindness.org)
This is one of the first successes of gene
therapy, which has had many failures until now.
It turns out the eye is a good place to perform
gene therapy as foreign body rejection occurs
less in the eye.
I recently met with a genetic counselor
at the US federal government's National
Eye Institute (NEI) of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH), a research arm of
the Department of Health and Human Services,
(www.nei.nih.gov).
The NIH is sponsoring gene therapy separate
from the FFB, and gene therapy is also occurring
in the UK. The various organizations are aware
of what each other is doing.
The NIH also plans on staring a new clinical trial
in the next few years.
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