CRISPR Gene-Editing Technology Will Eliminate "Blindness" - http://clapway.com/2015/12/21/crispr-gene-editing-technology-will-eliminate-blindness-123/

Pharmaceutical giant Bayer is making a joint venture with Swiss CRISPR Therapeutics to jump on the genome editing industry. Bayer has invested $335 million in the collaboration to use CRISPR/Cas9 technology, with means to find cures for genetic diseases.

Bayer is Looking to Cure Blood Disorders, Blindness and Congenital Heart Disease

The technology will be optimized to put heavy research into genetic diseases and develop different therapeutics to treat them. Through Bayern’s protein engineering and CRISPR’s genome-editing technology and heavy research and development, both parties hope to commercialize treatments to cure these diseases and bring them to the public.

Millions of people around the world will benefit from having access to new treatments to these diseases, which plague many. This can help even reduce risks of mothers passing down genetic diseases to their children, or help develop medicines that can shut down genes for these terrible sicknesses.

CRISPR Therapeutics and Bayer Will Erase These Diseases

Their focus is on curing blood disorders, congenital heart disease, and blindness. Bayer is making a new life-science unit for this venture. $300 million of this investment is going towards research and development, and the remaining $35 million will be Bayer’s stake in CRISPR Therapeutics.

CRISPR Therapeutics has had notorious breakthroughs with genome-editing technology. The fact that Bayer has jumped and joined hands with them goes to show that CRISPR technology is not kidding around, it means serious business. We can hope for great things to come out of this partnership in the near future.

Both Sides Get Some Serious Perks

CRISPR is highly benefited from this venture. They get to keep 50% ownership of high-risk and high-reward areas of blood disorders, congenital heart diseases, and blindness. They also get full access to target delivery technology and any IP development by the JV. They intend to keep this information to support their own goals in terms of strategic disease areas.

The event that prompted this venture was Bayer’s new Life Science Center, which operates as a ‘strategic innovation unit’. It is meant to facilitate partnerships with other biotech entrepreneurs. CRISPR has the most competitive gene-editing technology on the market, so it’s only natural that a giant like Bayer would seek it out as a partner.

This New Bayer-CRISPR Venture Has No Name Yet

Axe Bouchon will be the CEO of this new venture company. Bouchon, who is head of the Bayer Life Science Center, has expressed that the company is very impressed with CRISPR’s technology and that it promises to bring great things to the medical treatment community. The new company will be headquartered in London, UK, and it will have its operations in Cambridge, MA. What Changes Will this Partnership Bring?

What Changes Will this Partnership Bring?

First of all, this partnership will make genome-editing technology even more popular. This has been a trend in the scientific community, alongside molecular therapy. It has even brought to life projects like 23andMe. Whether or not Bayer will bring about something to release to the mass public or if they develop their own kind of treatment and equipment, it will shed new light in this great field fo medicine.

This joint venture will most likely be very secretive. Bayer is trusted worldwide to be a provider of cures, so it’s possible they will take all the time necessary to develop the perfect treatments and cures for these diseases. Congenital heart disease alone affects millions all over the world, and be it in a small or large scale, blindness is the same way. New research could be a serious game changer, and that is exactly what these two companies are going for.

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CRISPR Gene-Editing Technology Will Eliminate "Blindness"

%Microbes in our intestines can trigger #autoimmune uveitis, and a new study found microbes produce #proteins allowing harmful #immunecells to enter our eyes.% - http://clapway.com/2015/08/19/autoimmune-blindness-gut-microbes-101

Autoimmune uveitis is among the leading causes of blindness. There exist microbes that dwell naturally in our intestines that can be trigger to this disease, and a new study has found that some such microbes produce proteins that candor to harmfully maladjusted immune cells’ entering our eyes.

AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE ATTACKS EYES

This notion of intestinal microbes promoting autoimmune uveitis “has been there in the back of our minds,” comments ocular immunologist Andrew Taylor of the Boston University School of Medicine, a scientific bystander. “This is the first time that it’s been shown that gut flora seems to be part of the process.”

In fact, roughly 400,000 people presently in the States have autoimmune uveitis, a disease that sets the body’s means of controlling the immune system, T cells, on a mission to invade the eye and damage its middle layer. T cells are triggered by a special molecule called antigens, and when eye proteins are misidentified as antigens, T cells go haywire and attack. This isn’t an exceptional condition; healthy people possess the same T cells, it’s just that they don’t usually attack the eyes en masse. In order for T cells to attack at all they must first be activated by their corresponding antigen. It’s rare for antigens associated with autoimmune uveitis to leave the eye, so the question at hand is how on Earth are the wrong T cells stimulated the wrong way?

GUT MICROBES TO BLAME

The new study’s immunologist Rachel Caspi of the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, along with her colleagues, performed some genetic engineering on mice to trigger their T cells in the wrong way described above. The critters developed symptoms just as they were weaned. However, the study found that giving the mice four antibiotics capable of killing most of their gut microbes actually delayed the onset and reduced the severity of the disease. This effect was also noticed in germ-free mice, referred to as such because of their lack of gut bacteria.

EXTENSIVE T CELL TESTING

In order to know if gut microbes were actually stimulating the wrong T cells, Caspi and crew mixed intestinal contents of diseased mice to T cell cultures. This lovely cocktail activated the T cells, which means they had become the wrong kind, ready to infect. Caspi’s team suspected a specific protein intestinal microbes release of triggering T cells, so they injected a protein-destroying enzyme to the intestinal cocktail. Afterwards the T cell had a sluggish response to stimuli, which lends weight to the notion of them responding to a protein. Separately, scientists injected T cells from genetically altered mice into control mice not susceptible to autoimmune uveitis, the hypothesis being that T cells unexposed to intestinal material cannot cause uveitis. However, 86% of the mice developed the disease unless they had not received the major dose of T cells formerly exposed to diseased intestinal contents, reported researchers in Immunity, yesterday.

This means that a specific group of bacteria natural to the intestines produces proteins akin to those found in the eye, activating T cells present in the intestines. “We can prove that activation is occurring in the gut,” Caspi announced. Post-activation, these renegade T cells are then presumed to journey up to the eyes, where they force their way in and wreak a blinding havoc.

“It’s a very rigorous approach, and it really adds to our knowledge” regarding how autoimmune uveitis gets its start, remarked ocular immunologist Russell Read of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, another scientific spectator.

PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS & NEW QUESTIONS

So far this is solid scientific progress, but the next question to answer, according to immunologist James Rosenbaum of the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, is why only some (and not all) of us develop autoimmune reactions in our retinas. He goes on to suggest that perhaps only some humans have the bacteria necessary to stimulate T cells, or that a genetic predisposition may be involved.

Caspi and crew don’t want to raise false hopes of popping some antibiotic to cure autoimmune uveitis, but by cataloging gut mimesis of ocular proteins in conjunction with trigger-happy bacteria, researchers may one day procure new methods to treat or prevent this mysterious disease.

–story originally covered by Mitch Leslie of Science Magazine

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ENJOY HEALTHY EYES WITH LIFELIGHT; SUNLIGHT INDOORS

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Autoimmune Disease Behind Blindness Caused By Gut Microbes