Preventing choroidal neovascularization by long-term transscleral drug delivery

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Age-related Macular Degeneration (ARMD) is the leading cause of blindness for individuals over fifty-five years of age that live in the industrialized world. With the introduction of novel anti-angiogenic agents, clinical intervention is currently possible, but only for the wet form of the disease. However, these treatments are severely limited by the fact that they must be directly injected into the eye. This procedure carries a significant risk of complication and generates understandable issues of patient acceptability. There is a clear need for a therapy that either bypasses the need for ocular injection or reduces its frequency. Transscleral drug delivery provides a convenient way for delivering drug to the posterior segment of the eye. We propose to test and develop a novel and powerful transscleral drug delivery system that holds promise for being non-toxic, minimally invasive and highly customizable towards different therapies. The success of this proposal will offer a new method to the pharmaceutical industry and to patients worldwide to treat ARMD without the current burden of monthly or 6-weekly intraocular injections. For proof-of-concept, we will use a novel, human protein-based therapy that has shown great potential in preliminary animal studies.