Is this a potential new way to halt macular degeneration?

“It’s not as if this is the final answer to the problem [of age-related macular degeneration], but it’s certainly a big step along the way, hopefully,” said researcher Brad Gelfand, PhD.

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Researchers have successfully treated age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in mice after finding an unexpected link between the two main forms of the blinding eye disease, the leading cause of vision loss in people 60 and older
Researcher Brad Gelfand, PhD, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the UVA School of Engineering, cautions that his team is far from being able to use the approach in patients with AMD, but he is excited about the potential it holds. “It’s not as if this is the final answer to the problem, but it’s certainly a big step along the way, hopefully,” he said
The new discovery links the “dry” and “wet” forms of macular degeneration in a surprising way. Gelfand has focused primarily on the more common, and currently untreatable, dry form. But after making a discovery about dry AMD, he went on to determine that the finding held true for wet AMD as well. “It was almost chance – we were like, ‘Why don’t we just go ahead and look for wet?’ When we first saw the results, I was very surprised,” he said. “Initially, it was equal parts excitement and disbelief."
Gelfand, of UVA’s Center for Advanced Vision Science, found that the absence of a particular enzyme could drive both forms of AMD. The enzyme, called Dicer, is lost with age, and that loss leads to an overgrowth of blood vessels in the retina and other damage, he and his team determined
The discovery was so unexpected he wanted to confirm. “We weren’t really satisfied with just one system,” he said. “We actually got a different model that had originated from a totally different lab, in Japan, and found the same exact thing. Then we went back to some of our old models where we had gotten rid of Dicer and found the same exact thing.”
If successful, though, it would be the first treatment for dry AMD and could significantly improve treatment for wet AMD
“As it stands, patients with [wet] AMD have to undergo frequent injections into their eye, which can be painful and comes with some risks. They have to come to the eye doctor once a month or every other month. A lot of these people can’t drive. So it’s a huge burden,” he said. “The idea behind using gene therapy like the one we propose is that one treatment would last for a very long time. It’s a sustained therapy. So we can improve their vision and reduce the number of doctor’s visits they have to make.”
Developing a Dicer-based treatment will likely take several years if all goes well

The Complete Story: Potential Way to Halt Blinding Macular Degeneration Identified

University of Virginia School of Medicine | University of Virginia School of Engineering

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