A team at UNAM's Institute of Neurobiology (INB) in Juriquilla, Querétaro, is working on eye drops that aim to replace the painful, costly and not always effective intraocular injections currently used against diabetic retinopathy.
The development is based on vasoinhibin, a natural molecule able to stop the abnormal growth of blood vessels in the retina, responsible for much of the vision loss in people with diabetes. It's the result of 30 years of research at the INB's Molecular Endocrinology Laboratory.
The researchers found that vasoinhibin's biological activity is concentrated in just 3 of its 123 amino acids, which allowed them to design a smaller, more functional molecule that's easy to formulate as eye drops. Beyond avoiding the trauma of eye injections, this could make it easier for more patients to stick with treatment to the end.