Dr. Hu Yang, a Missouri S&T (USA) professor who is pioneering new glaucoma treatments was
recently awarded the National Institutes for Health’s R01 grant, which will
provide his research team with $2.5 million in funding over the next five
years.
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| Dr. Hu Yang |
Yang
and his fellow researchers have developed a treatment that could eventually
allow patients to only use eye drops once per week instead of daily, and it
should also be more effective than current regimens.
Yang’s
treatment involves a nanoparticle delivery system that delivers more ophthalmic
medications into the eye. With current eye drops, only about 2% of the
treatment reaches its targeted location.
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| A nanoparticle eyedrop model |
The
new formulation will deliver more than one type of medication, Yang says. The
medications will work to drain blockages in the eyes, while also reducing the
production of aqueous humor, which is a fluid in the eye that can cause
pressure.
Yang’s
current NIH grant project is for five years, but since he has developed
multiple iterations of the treatment over the past several years, he says it
would still be possible to begin clinical trials before the current project is
completed.
“This
treatment should make a significant difference for patients with glaucoma, so
we obviously would like to see them benefit from it as soon as possible,” he
says. “We have worked on this for several years and are highly optimistic about
its potential efficacy.”
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