by Dan Roberts You’ve heard it before: “Tobacco Smoking Is A Major Cause Of Age Related Macular Degeneration”. According to most research, individuals 65 years of age and over double their risk of developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD) if they smoke. Why? Because tobacco smoking: Reduces levels of plasma antioxidant, a substance in the blood [Read More]
Category: Research and Developments
Experimental Gene Therapies Still Raising Hopes
Wills Eye Hospital has announced that it has treated the first RESCUE trial patient in the United States enrolled in an FDA-approved gene therapy vision research study. A product called GS010 (GenSight Biologics), can be injected right into the eye and, in a sense, “re-wire” or lower the patient’s risk for getting the disease. The patient has [Read More]
Future Sustained Drug Delivery Methods for Choroidal Neovascularization
During the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Retina Subspecialty Day in 2015, Peter K. Kaiser, MD, described six alternative methods being looked at for delivery of anti-VEGF drugs into the retinas of individuals experiencing choroidal neovascularization (CNV). Periodic intraocular injections are currently the only procedure for halting damaging blood vessel growth and leakage. Injections are expensive, time-consuming, and burdensome on the patients, so [Read More]
New Combination Therapy Treats Retinal Damage in Diabetics
Aerpio Therapeutics, Inc. has announced promising results from their “TIME-2” study of AKB-9778 as a treatment for diabetic retinopathy (DR). AKB-9778 alone and in combination with Lucentis® (ranibizumab) improved underlying retinopathy by 10.0%, and 11.4% compared to 8.8% of patients receiving Lucentis® alone. The clinical findings were presented by Pravin U. Dugel, M.D., at the [Read More]
AVA-101 May Extend Time Between Wet AMD Treatments
In 2014, Avalanche Biotechnologies postulated that a single injection of a new gene therapy treatment could possibly stop blood vessel growth and leakage in the wet form of Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) for several years. A single injection of a drug called AVA-101 (aka sFlt-1) could create a kind of biofactory that continuously secretes a therapeutic protein [Read More]