News & Media

November 15, 2010

An international collaboration between UC Santa Barbara, the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), and several other research institutions, is bringing together leaders in the fields of stem cell biology, basic science, and ophthalmology to develop a treatment for blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration. The California Project to Cure Blindness (CPCB) was formed with a $16 million California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) "disease team" grant awarded in late 2009 to fund development of a stem cell-based treatment for age-related macular degeneration. As part of the CIRM Disease Team partnership program, an additional $4.1 million from Britain's Medical Research Council funds collaborative work at University College of London. - See more at: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2010/012937/ucsb-part-international-research-collaboration-focusing-age-related-macular-degeneration#sthash.5E6MUdkq.dpuf

August 06, 2010

James D. Cooper, Associate Professor in the Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology Department as well as the Biomolecular Science and Engineering Program at UC Santa Barbara was published in the August issue of Cell Stem Cell for his collaborative work with Aaron M. Newman using an unsupervised clustering algorithm called AutoSOME to study lab specific gene expression signatures in Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells(iPSC) and Human Embryonic Stem Cells(hESC). Reanalysis of microarray gene expression data from seven different laboratories shows strong correlation between gene expression signatures and specific laboratories in both ESC and iPSC lines.

April 23, 2010

Hyongsok (Tom) Soh, Co-Director of UCSB’s Center for Stem Cell Biology and Engineering, has been awarded a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue his research combining microfluidics and high-throughput sequencing to accelerate development of aptamer reagents that bind protein targets.

December 03, 2009

Two studies recently published describe the derivation and functional testing of retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC’s). Lead by MCDB professor and CSCBE executive director Dennis Clegg in collaboration with Pete Coffey from the University College London, these studies show that RPE can be derived from iPSC’s and can rescue visual function in a rat model of blindness. These results provide the potential for cell replacement therapy for age-related macular degeneration. The research was published in the October 27th, 2009 issue of the journal Stem Cells and on December 2nd, 2009 in the online open-access journal PLoS One.

October 28, 2009

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and UK Medical Research Council (MRC) are funding a $20 million multi-institutional grant on vision research. UC Santa Barbara will receive $2.5 million for their stem cell-related research. This funding will help translate basic stem cell research to clinical trials on treating macular degeneration.

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