Treating retina diseases more precisely
With more than 140 million nerve cells, the retina is a highly complex visual system, where it is challenging to treat diseases. A new study by researchers from the Biophysics group of Daniel Müller and colleagues from the Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) now present an innovative therapeutic approach. The treatment involves attaching viruses to nanoparticles, which are electromagnetically guided to deploy therapeutics exactly where they are needed.
Many eye diseases, like age-related macular degeneration (AMD), damage the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye. If not treated effectively blindness or visual impairment are the consequences.
In retinal gene therapies, researchers celebrated great successes with therapeutic viruses that deliver genes to the retina. However, guiding the viruses to selected layers, cell types and areas of the retina remained the key challenge.
An innovative approach conducted by Seungkuk Ahn and Oliver Siontas from the Müller group and researchers of the Ophthalmology group of Sascha Fauser from Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED), now engineered nanoparticles and magnetically guide these vehicles three-dimensionally through the eye so that they can precisely deliver viruses to neuronal cells, layers and areas of the retina.
“We anticipate that this new approach that works on retinal explants and whole eyes from porcine can be applied to many other tissues or organs to guide gene delivery in gene therapies with great precision.”Daniel J. Müller, Head of the Biophysics group at D-BSSE
Find article published by Advanced Healthcare Materials:
Ahn, S., Siontas, O., Koester, J., Krol, J., Fauser, S. and D. J. Müller (2024) external page Magentically guided adeno-associated virus delivery for the spatially targeted transduction of retina in eyes. Advanced Healthcare Materials, https://doi.org/10.1002/adhm.202470176.
external page Cover picture and graphical abstract (image with permission from Martin Oeggerli, Micronaut).
Learn about research in the Biophysics group of Daniel Müller.