Eye on the Cure

The Sunday morning poster session at ARVO included a Foundation-funded research effort from Oklahoma University (OU) in which Dr. Lily Wong and her colleagues used a nanoceria treatment to slow retinal degeneration in a mouse model of autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa (adRP).

Administered by an injection into the eye like that used for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), nanoceria are tiny manmade nanoparticles (1/12,000^th the diameter of a human hair) that literally devour the byproducts of oxidative stress that cause damage and vision loss in a variety of retinal diseases.

This team has now demonstrated nanoceria’s effectiveness in four different mouse models of retinal degeneration — adRP, Usher syndrome, wet AMD and degeneration caused by strong light exposure.

We are excited by the potential of this treatment approach for many of our retinal degenerative diseases, and that the OU team is working to bring it into the clinic. The team still has work to do in perfecting this treatment, but it’s making excellent progress.

Hats off to Dr. James McGinnis, who is leading this effort.

This is just one example of many we have seen at ARVO so far of how donations to the Foundation are yielding impressive returns.