Genetic Engineering Publications - GEG Tech top picks

Glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disease that causes vision loss and blindness due to a damaged optic nerve. Unfortunately, there is currently no cure. In a paper recently published in Communications Biology, researchers found that restoring mitochondrial homeostasis in diseased neurons can protect optic nerve cells from damage. The research team used induced pluripotent stem cells from glaucoma and non-glaucoma patients as well as clustered regularly spaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) from human embryonic stem cells with glaucoma mutation. Using optic nerve stem cell differentiated retinal ganglion cells, electron microscopy and metabolic analysis, the researchers identified glaucomatous retinal ganglion cells with mitochondrial deficiency with a higher metabolic load on each mitochondrion, which leads to mitochondrial damage and degeneration. However, the process could be reversed by enhancing mitochondrial biogenesis with a pharmacological agent. The team showed that retinal ganglion cells are very efficient at degrading bad mitochondria, but at the same time produce more to maintain homeostasis.