Dr. Taka Kuwajima, whose team focuses on optic nerve regeneration and mechanisms that lead to nerve cell death in a variety of ocular diseases has recently identified novel molecular pathways that affect nerve cell death at early and late stages of axon degeneration. Visual information is conveyed from the eye to the brain via the optic nerve, an assemblage of nerve cells (called axons) that exit directly from the retina and run to the visual centers of the brain. Damage to the optic nerve from a severe injury or disease invariably leads to vision loss, often resulting in blindness.  Glaucoma,