Modeling retinitis pigmentosa with iPS cells

Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - 10:00 in Health & Medicine

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a cluster of genetically determined eye disorders that cause visual defects such as night blindness and narrowing of the field of vision, due to progressive loss of rod photoreceptors. As many as 45 different genes have been linked to the inheritance of this disease, which suggests diversity in etiology and makes development of a standardized animal model problematic. Thus, despite a range of clinical trials of nutritional and drug-based interventions for RP, the disease remains untreatable. Better platforms for modeling the disease and testing drug candidates in vitro are urgently needed.

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