On the horizon: seeing is believing

The breakthroughs in medicine come daily.

For many people past the age of 40, focusing on close objects restaurant menus, — for instance — just gets harder and harder. Most people with this condition, called presbyopia, eventually give in and get reading glasses, bifocals or glasses with progressive lenses. But what if there were another alternative that didn't require people to carry an extra set of glasses or have only part of their field of vision in focus at any one time? Zoom Focus Eyewear has just such an option: eyeglasses, called TruFocals, that the wearer can manually adjust to give clear, undistorted vision whether reading a book, working on a computer or looking into the distance.

Three scientists have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a process that, among other things, helps synthesize medicines. One example involves a marine sponge called Discodermia dissoluta. As a defensive mechanism, the sponges produce large and complex chemical molecules that are poisonous and that prevent other organisms from exploiting them. And the substance produced by this particular sponge, discodermolide, seemed to have anti-cancer properties. The process that the Nobel winners helped develop made it possible to artificially produce the substance in large enough quantities to make research practical.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say they can deliver a dormant toxin into a specific site such as a tumor for anti-cancer therapy, then chemically trigger the toxin to "de-cloak" and attack the tumor from within.

Researchers are developing an artificial retina that transforms a camera feed into electric pulses that stimulate the optic nerve, providing rudimentary vision for millions of people with degenerative retinal diseases. The research, involving six national labs, four universities and a commercial partner is developing technologies that will enable third- and fourth-generation models using as many as 1024 electrodes—which could provide enough detail to read 24-point font and recognize faces. 

Errors in the copying of genes during cell division can cause numerous diseases, including cancer. Yale School of Medicine scientists, however, have unraveled the secrets of a much more rare phenomenon with potential therapeutic implications – disease-causing genes that show a high frequency of self-repair. The researchers say that knowing that these particular mutations can revert with high frequency gives them hope that they might find a way to mimic this process to develop treatments for other genetic diseases.