Researchers in the US have developed a new drug that can be delivered directly into the eye via an eye-dropper to shrink and dissolve cataracts — the leading cause of blindness in humans. While the effects have yet to be tested on humans, the team from the University of California hopes to replicate the findings in clinical trials and offer an alternative to the only treatment that’s available to patients — painful and expensive surgery.
They tested their lanosterol-based eye drops in three types of experiments. They worked with human lens in the lab and saw a decrease in cataract size. They then tested the effects on rabbits, and according to Hanae Armitage at Science Mag, after six days, all but two of their 13 patients had gone from having severe cataracts to mild cataracts or no cataracts at all. Finally, they tested the eye drops on dogs with naturally occurring cataracts. Just like the human lens and the rabbits, the dogs responded positively to the drug, with severe cataracts shrinking away to nothing. The results have been published in Nature.
“This is a really comprehensive and compelling paper — the strongest I’ve seen,” molecular biologist Jonathan King from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told Armitage. While not affiliated with this study, King has been involved in cataract research for the past 15 years. “They discovered the phenomena and then followed with all of the experiments that you should do — that’s as biologically relevant as you can get.”
The next step is for the researchers to figure out how the lanosterol-based eye drops are eliciting this response from the cataract proteins, and to progress their research to human trials.
Source: www.sciencealert.com
