21. January 2009 22:58
Researchers from Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston, and ActiveSite Pharmaceuticals, Inc., San Francisco, announced today that they have demonstrated that a specific inhibitor of the protease plasma kallikrein, ASP-440, developed by ActiveSite Pharmaceuticals, may provide a new therapeutic approach for treatment of diabetic retinopathy, the most common eye-related complication of diabetes.
The study, which was partly funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), is published in the February 2009 issue of the journal Hypertension .
In the published study, led by Edward P. Feener, Ph.D., an Investigator in the Section on Vascular Cell Biology at the Joslin Diabetes Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, continuous systemic administration of ASP-440 proved effective in decreasing hypertension-induced increased retinal vascular permeability in rodents, by as much as 70%. Increased retinal vascular permeability is a characteristic finding in diabetic retinopathy and a primary cause of diabetic macular edema, a leading cause of visual impairment associated with diabetes. Hypertension is a known risk factor for the development of retinopathy. ASP-440 was also found to be effective in lowering the elevated blood pressure in these animals.
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