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Damage to the optic nerve can lead to irreversible blindness. A newly investigated regeneration factor could change that, UConn researchers report in the May 2024 issue of Experimental Neurology.

Blindness and vision impairment due to optic nerve damage affect more than 3 million people in the US alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The most common reason for that damage is glaucoma, a family of eye diseases that affect the flow of liquid in the eye, eventually damaging the long bundle of cells that connect the retina to the brain. That bundle of cells is the optic nerve. They don’t grow back after being damaged, leading to permanent vision loss.

Now, a team of researchers in the lab of UConn School of Medicine neuroscientist Ephraim Trakhtenberg have shown that a protein previously thought unimportant can stimulate regrowth of nerve cells. The protein is called nuclear factor erythroid 3 (Nfe3), and it is unique to nerves originating in the retina. Normally it is not produced by adult neurons.