“
OUR GROUP IS AT THE
FOREFRONT OF THE EMERGING STUDY OF TEAR BIOLOGY,
WE HOPE THAT MINING THE
“
MOLECULAR COMPONENTS
OF TEARS MAY YIELD NOVEL BIOMARKERS FOR NEW THERAPIES.
— Vinay Aakalu, M.D., M.P.H.
R01 Grant Vinay Aakalu, M.D., M.P.H.
Unlocking the Therapeutic Potential of Tears Kellogg is also home to one of the nation’s most robust and diverse oculoplastics research portfolios, including numerous basic, clinical and translational research grants, clinical trials, and patent applications. Dr. Aakalu in Principal Investigator on two NIH R01 grants. The latest aims to develop a novel treatment approach for the fatal disease Niemann-Pick Type C (N-P). The project leverages his groundbreaking work deriving therapeutic agents from the peptides found in tears. N-P is a rare, genetic neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the body’s inability to transport cholesterol and other fatty substances (lipids). As a result, lipids build up within brain and other cell types. In earlier research into lipid and small molecule therapies to treat dry eye and corneal injuries,
Dr. Aakalu and his colleagues discovered that the peptide they were studying had something in common with N-P; namely, the protein receptor TMEM97. “The TMEM97 receptor has been shown to impact the protein that is damaged in N-P,” explains Dr. Aakalu. “We found that TMEM97 can, in turn, be impacted by the peptide-based formula we developed for dry eye. With that knowledge, we applied those peptides to models of N-P and found that they yielded improvements in some features of the disease.” The grant will fund future studies to advance a potential peptide-based treatment for N-P. While N-P is an unusual target in ophthalmology research, the development of peptide-based therapeutics represents an exciting new frontier for treating a range of ocular disorders. “Our group is at the forefront of the emerging study of tear biology,” Dr. Aakalu says. “We hope that mining the molecular components of tears may yield novel biomarkers for new therapies.”
Patent Issued for Photo-Mediated Ultrasound Therapy A U.S. patent has been issued to Yannis M. Paulus, M.D., Xueding Wang, Ph.D., and Xinmai Yang, Ph.D., for Photomediated Ultrasound Therapy, or PUT, a noninvasive method of removing the microvessels whose growth is associated with numerous eye diseases, including wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy. PUT combines synchronized nanosecond laser
pulses with bursts of ultrasound. It delivers laser pulses at more than 10 times lower intensity than conventional laser combined with synchronized ultrasound bursts, making it possible to target microvessels with much greater precision, while posing far less risk to surrounding tissue. “The ability to deliver more targeted therapy is especially valuable in the treatment of diseases such as AMD, where the growth of new blood vessels tends to cluster around the fovea—the center of the macula,” explains Dr. Paulus. “Unlike conventional laser treatment, which can result in a blind spot in the patient’s center of vision, PUT can remove microvessels while preserving central vision.” 7
