Researchers are restoring function to the eyes of organ donors, providing a new path for studying eye diseases to help restore lost sight
to find new ways to prevent, slow or treat vision loss. Strategies range from developing drugs that protect people with vision loss against further damage to restoring vision with cell and gene therapies that would replace, regenerate or repair retinal neurons that no longer work. The first approval for any gene therapy came in 2018 for a mutation that causes blindness.
Eye diseases such as glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, and the inherited retinitis pigmentosa exact a toll on vision by damaging or killing various retinal cells. A class of drugs including Regeneron Inc.’s Eylea andLucentis can be injected into the eye to treat wet age-related macular degeneration—the most advanced and debilitating form of AMD and the leading cause of reading loss and irreversible blindness in the elderly.
So would, say, more insight into early stages of macular degeneration, where treatments are needed to protect against worsening disease. “You could imagine doing experiments in organ-donor tissue from people who had early macular degeneration,” said Joan Miller, chief of ophthalmology at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts Eye and Ear. “It might help you tease out what are some of the early steps” in the condition.
But her research with eyes obtained after autopsy convinced Dr. Hanneken that some metabolic activity persisted at least briefly after death. Experiments with both mice and human post-mortem eyes showed that loss of oxygen and changes in acidity were the main culprits in the rapid demise of retinal cells.Research is under way across the field of ophthalmology to find new ways to prevent, slow or treat vision loss. What do you find most important or hopeful? Join the conversation below.
Then an organ-donor organization agreed to allow Dr. Hanneken to recover eyes from patients who were declared brain dead, but who remained on life support to keep their heart and other organs viable for transplant.
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