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Recent News
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December 9th, 2020
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November 3rd, 2020
A group of IVR researchers recently developed Spectacle, a framework for exploring single-cell RNA-Seq datasets. They used Spectacle to provide access to several human retinal and choroidal single-cell datasets to the research community. The Spectacle resource can be found at singlecell.ivr.uiowa.edu. The full publication can be found here.
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October 29th, 2020
IVR researchers recently published an article exploring the utility of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to model to validate and expand the catalog of disease-causing variations. Integrating iPSC-based modeling into the process of molecular diagnosis is expected to enable a major influx of variant discovery and expanded treatment of inherited retinal disease. The full publication can be found here.
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September 23rd, 2020
A group of IVR researchers published an article, reporting a detailed protocol for differentiating iPSCs into choroidal endothelial cells. This protocol will be useful for developing in vitro models toward understanding the mechanisms of choroidal endothelia cell loss early in AMD. The full publication can be found here.
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May 20th, 2019
IVR researchers recently published an article presenting the development and evaluation of a gene therapy vector for RPGR, the 3rd most common cause of all inherited retinal disease. This gene is a challenging therapeutic target, because gene therapy vectors containing wild-type RPGR sequence, which includes the highly repetitive low complexity region ORF15, are extremely unstable. They exhibit accumulations of genomic changes during the process of propagating the viral plasmid.
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May 6th, 2019
A group of IVR researchers have published the first single-cell investigation of central macula versus peripheral retina, from three human donors.
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April 5th, 2019
A team of IVR researchers published their successful correction of disease-causing mutations in patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Enhanced S-cone syndrome (ESCS) is caused by recessive mutations in the photoreceptor cell transcription factor NR2E3. The loss of functional NR2E3 results in reduced populations of rod photoreceptors, due to a large increase in the population of photoreceptors tuned to identify short-wavelength (blue) light.
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January 16th, 2019
The University of Iowa and the UI Institute for Vision Research announced today that Alice and John Butler of Dubuque, Iowa, have made a $5 million donation to accelerate research and treatments for blinding eye diseases that affect millions of people worldwide. Their gift will establish the Alice L. and John E. Butler Vision Research Fund, which will support gene- and stem-cell based treatments for degenerative retinal diseases.
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August 9th, 2018
Monday night, at Sam’s Scramble for Sight in Grand Rapids Michigan, the Advisory Board of the Institute for Vision Research announced the creation of an annual “Heart of Our Vision Award” to recognize someone in our organization who has made an extraordinary contribution to the cure of heritable blindness. This year, Dr. Budd Tucker was chosen as the first recipient of the award and was presented with a Fender Telecaster guitar autographed by Bruce Springsteen to commemorate the event.
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July 13th, 2018
The Kimberling Usher Research Laboratory in the Institute for Vision Research is pleased to announce an increase in our campaign goal to $10 million. This increase is possible because addiitonal major donors have joined the "challenge side" of the matching effort so that we can now match every gift for Usher Syndrome Research, dollar for dollar, until $10 million is raised.