New drops can make painful eye jabs history for AMD sufferers

A type of eye drop to control age-related blindness has been developed by a team of researchers.

The drops developed at the University of Birmingham could potentially revolutionise the treatment of one of the leading causes of blindness in the UK.

The results of the collaborative research could spell the end of painful injections directly into the eye to treat the increasingly common eye disorder known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Team leader Felicity de Cogan, from the University of Birmingham's Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, have invented a method of delivering the injected drug as an eye drop instead, and their laboratory research has obtained the same outcomes as the injected drug.

The drop uses a cell-penetrating peptide (CPP) to deliver the drug to the relevant part of the eye within minutes.

Dr de Cogan said: "The CPP-drug has the potential to have a significant impact on the treatment of AMD by revolutionising drug-delivery options. Efficacious self-administered drug application by eye drop would lead to a significant reduction in adverse outcomes and health care costs compared with current treatments."

"The CPP-plus drug complex also has potential application to other chronic ocular diseases that require drug delivery to the posterior chamber of the eye," she noted, adding, "We believe this is going to be very important in terms of empowering of patients and reducing the cost of treatment to the NHS."

The study appears in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.