Scientists are unveiling a major breakthrough that could change the lives of millions around the world. A new drug is showing promise in reversing retinal damage and restoring vision, targeting conditions like macular degeneration and glaucoma. This morning, Dr James Deluso, an optometrist, joins us now to break down what this means for patients.
Good morning, doctor. Thanks so much for being with us. Good morning.
Thank you for having me. So just start off if you could by kind of summarizing what what were the core findings of this research and why might this be so significant for people with eye diseases. Sure.
Sure. There was a uh article published in Nature Communications this past March of 2025 and these uh researchers in Korea looked at why uh invertebrates, cold blooded invertebrates, specifically zebra fish, had this ability to regenerate their retina cells and people could not. And so what they did find which is sort of an aha moment was there was this cell uh called prox one protein that for whatever reason isn't present in high quantities in these fish but in people it seemed to be what was kind of putting the brakes on the stem cells from regenerating these retina cells.
And so what they did is they used gene therapy to create a treatment to allow our retinal cells to basically produce antibodies to block that protein which seemed to be what was really putting the brakes on our eyes ability to heal from retinal damage. Wow. And so it really opens the door for a lot new clinical uh applications for treating many many diseases that we really uh didn't have much more treatment for other than just uh slowing progression and treating symptoms.
Doctor, how is this treatment different from all the others on the market? Well, most of our treatments such as treatment for macular degeneration or glaucoma um really rely upon slowing progression and treating symptoms. So he really didn't have any real mechanism to repair or restore vision.
So all the the therapy really involves early diagnosis and really trying to clinically manage the conditions from worsening. But this new uh you know avenue opens up ways to actually restore vision. Yeah.
So then with that in mind, what are some of the potential clinical applications for this? Well, when we think about some of the major causes of blindness worldwide, chief among them is age related macular degeneration. And it's really, you know, the real uh leading cause of central vision loss for people 65 and older.
Uh and so that is probably about 200 200 million people worldwide that are actually uh suffering from vision loss from that condition alone. And uh diabetic retinopathy where there's another leading cause of blindness for about 1 million people worldwide, you know, could have uh benefit. And then of course glaucoma which really glaucoma affects one in 188 people in the United States.
So there's a lot of people that could benefit from new uh treatment. And what are the next steps here for this research and when can we potentially see a clinical trial? Right.
So they're still in pre-clinical studies and they're they're still working with mice and animals, but they do uh plan to start human clinical trials in 2028. Yeah. And how hopeful are you about this?
I mean it sounds pretty extraordinary the science behind so far what they've been able to do. Sure. Uh so you know it's going to take time for sure but it really provides us sort of this uh watershed moment where we think that we really can uh target and actually improve vision and I'm very optimistic because were there any side effects that you know from blocking that particular protein that you talked about was there any kind of harmful effect?
Well, um it seemed that the biggest limiting factor with that gene therapy is it doesn't seem to have permanent or long-term uh uh improvement. So, they really have to work on uh you know the logistics of how to uh create a longer term therapy. I see.
Uh but in terms of uh any real negative uh side effects of the the the treatment there, it seemed to be very good. And finally, what advice do you want to give to viewers this morning with any type of retinal damage or issues that they're facing? Well, the main thing that I would really love for all of our listeners to keep in mind is early diagnosis for any of these diseases is key and it can really make a big difference in uh protecting vision.
So certainly see your eye care provider and also your primary care physician. Once a year, every six months. What do you say?
I'd say once a year. I always recommend once a year. All right, good advice.
Thank you so much for joining us, Dr Delarus.
