Corneal Repair: A Clear Vision!

Damage to the surface of the cornea causes pain and loss of vision, but regenerative therapies are providing a clearer, brighter future.

If the eyes are the window to the soul, then it is the cornea that lets the light enter.

For more than 200 years, physicians have been preoccupied with keeping this dome-shaped, transparent surface in front of the iris and pupil clear. German surgeon Franz Reisinger was the first to attempt a corneal transplant in animals in 1818. And in 1838, US ophthalmologist Richard Kissam tried to replace the opaque cornea of a young patient with the healthy cornea of a pig, but the procedure failed when the transplant was rejected. The first successful transplant in humans was in 1905, but outcomes remained poor until the mid-twentieth century, when developments in infection control, anaesthesiology, surgical techniques and immunology vastly improved the success rate of corneal transplantation. In the twenty-first century, advances in cell-culture techniques and bioengineering have opened the door to regenerative treatments for people with damage to one or both corneas.

Unclouded vision requires a clear cornea. Its epithelial surface constantly renews itself to maintain an unblemished, uniformly refractive surface. Cells that are shed from the surface are replaced by new ones that emanate from a small population of stem cells located at the edge, or limbus, of the cornea.

If the stem cells at the limbus are damaged, the renewal process is interrupted. The complete or partial loss of these stem cells — limbal stem-cell deficiency (LSCD) — allows the opaque conjunctiva to grow over the cornea. This can lead to intense pain and, in the most-severe cases, blindness.

Let there be sight -David Holmes

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Source: Nature

Fifty Biotech and Biopharma Recruiters in the Lists.

Who They Know Can Help You Land a Job in the Industry

In Deloitte’s “2016 U.S. Life Sciences Industry Outlook” released in January, Greg Reh, the firm’s U.S. and Global Life Sciences sector leader, offered a somewhat encouraging assessment of employment prospects this year: “Despite current economic, political, technological, and social challenges, life sciences companies worldwide should see enough long-term growth opportunities to feel cautiously optimistic about 2016.”

Three such opportunities were identified by recruiting firm Smith Hanley Associates earlier this year: One was candidate movement to smaller biopharmas, which the firm said leads to higher base salaries as companies scramble to offset the loss of long-term incentives given by big pharma. Mergers and acquisitions create jobs for candidates willing to relocate, whereas the growth of big data adds positions for in-house data scientists but also results in project outsourcing to vendors that creates new markets and innovations, Smith Hanley added.

All those trends should mean more work for biopharma recruiters, who match employers with job candidates in significant portions of the industry.

Read more: Fifty Biotech and Biopharma Recruiters in the Lists.

The workload of recruiters should increase this year since biotech and other life sciences employers
worldwide “should see enough long-term growth opportunities to feel cautiously optimistic about
2016,” according to Deloitte Consulting.

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