Discovery by University of Utah researchers may help prevent blindness

"What our discovery does has direct application to eye disease and diabetes and age-related macular degeneration. But most everyone is familiar with the bad effects of vessel destabilization. We think any disease where vessels leak and accumulate could benefit. How broad is this principle and how strong the application outside of the eye, we don't yet know."

Dr. Kang Zhang, associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the Moran Eye Center and an investigator with the U.'s Program in Human Molecular Biology and Genetics, touted the potential for developing drugs to activate Robo4. His lab worked with Li's, using the same eye disease animal models used for drug development, which could shorten the time it takes to get to human trials.

Like other treatments that affect an eye's blood vessels, this is injected, Li said.

He predicts an eventual "race to figure out how to make something smaller to activate this receptor so we can do it without injecting." Some treatments exist for AMD, the leading cause of blindness in people over 65, he said. For diabetic eye disease (the leading cause in younger adults), there are no proven therapies.

Li left the biotech field for academia five years ago specifically to research eye blood vessel instability and ways to reverse it. His U. collaborators on the study include graduate student Christopher A. Jones and Nyall London, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Oncological Sciences and the Program in Human Molecular Biology and Genetics, as well as several other researchers from Li's lab. Others contributed from the University of California, San Diego; the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; and Harvard Medical School. Much of the funding came from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Eye Institute.

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E-mail: lois@desnews.com