About Glaucoma

What is Glaucoma?

Glaucoma, a group of optic neuropathy eye diseases characterized by progressive optic nerve degeneration and corresponding visual field loss, is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, and its prevalence increases year on year. Glaucoma can be divided into primary glaucoma, secondary glaucoma, and rare juvenile and congenital glaucoma according to pathophysiological mechanisms. Primary glaucoma has two clinical phenotypes: open-angle glaucoma (POAG) and angle-closure glaucoma. Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) is the most common form of the disease, affecting approximately 53 million people worldwide, of whom an estimated 6 million progress to blindness in both eyes. Across all glaucoma subtypes, elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) is considered a major risk factor for glaucoma development and progression, and lowering IOP is currently the only documented treatment for glaucoma.

Pipeline Drugs and Trends in Clinical Trials

As possible targets for glaucoma continue to be explored, more and more compounds have been identified for glaucoma treatment. Figure 1 shows new compounds in ongoing trials in recent years, trials completed within two years, and recently approved compounds of glaucoma treatment drugs. The mechanisms of action of several drugs of interest are listed in Table 1.

Fig. 1. New compounds in ongoing trials, trials completed within 2 years and compounds resulting in recently approved glaucoma treatment drugs. (Storgaard L, et al., 2021)

Tab. 1. Several glaucoma drugs of interest and their mechanisms of action (MOA).

Novel Drug Delivery System for Glaucoma

Drug nonadherence is a major challenge for glaucoma patients who often complain of difficulty instilling eye drops and adhering to complex eye drop dosing schedules. To optimize glaucoma drug use, ongoing continuous drug delivery systems have been developed for two decades. In addition to the development of inserts and implants, nanotechnology is another rapidly developing new drug delivery route. The size of nanoparticles ranges from 1 to 100 nm, and drugs on various nanoparticles have the ability to bypass biological barriers, allowing the drug to act directly on the target site. Subconjunctival injection of polyamine polymer particles, ciliary body injection of amonidine microspheres, and intravitreal injection of amonidine, travoprost, and bimatoprost nanosponges have completed successful animal experiments.

One-Stop Preclinical Glaucoma Studies Solutions

As an industry-leading comprehensive contract research organization (CRO), Ace Therapeutics focuses on the health of ocular diseases and improves ocular diseases by helping customers provide drug discovery and preclinical research solutions. Our support staff averages decades of experience in preclinical ophthalmology research for pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, and large CROs, who help customers around the world deal with each stage of preclinical drug development. Our one-stop solutions cover the development of ocular disease models, in vivo ocular pharmacodynamic studies, ocular tolerance and safety studies, early pilot studies, and proof-of-concept and bioanalytical levels. All of our projects are customizable and flexible, which allows us to fully understand our clients' needs and how to meet them.

At Ace Therapeutics, our team of experts is dedicated to supporting preclinical glaucoma research. Our glaucoma platform includes multi-species models (rodent, zebrafish, rabbit, minipig, canine, and non-human primate (NHP)) to support your development of IOP-lowering drugs or optic nerve-protective therapies. Our services scope covers the whole process from lead compound discovery to the implementation of preclinical GLP projects. With decades of experience in glaucoma research, we have independently developed a series of live animal models that have been verified by a large number of experiments, such as chemically induced glaucoma models and genetically engineered glaucoma models, to accelerate your preclinical ocular pharmacodynamics evaluation.

Reference

1. Storgaard L, Tran TL, Freiberg JC, et al. Glaucoma Clinical Research: Trends in Treatment Strategies and Drug Development. Front Med (Lausanne). 2021, 8:733080.

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