BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Envisioning plasticity

May 22, 2006 7:00 AM UTC

Italian researchers have shown that surgery plus injections of chondroitinase ABC (chABC), an enzyme that degrades chondroitin and some closely related proteins, helps recover vision loss in adult rats with amblyopia, or "lazy eye." They said the procedure could be used to treat amblyopia or other damage to the CNS, like spinal cord injury.

Scientists from the Instituto di Neuroscienze at the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Pisa published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that visual acuity returned to normal levels in rats that underwent surgery to keep open a visually impaired eye and received injections of chABC. ...