Targeting members of the IgLON family as a novel and translatable approach to promote neuroprotection and nerve repair

Brief Lay Background

Glaucoma is a common eye disorder affecting approximately 500,000 people in the UK, leading to over 1 million outpatient visits to the Hospital Eye Service each year. Glaucoma is often associated with increased pressure within the eye, causing irreversible damage to the optic nerve and significant loss of specific nerve cells in the eye crucial for sending visual information to the brain, known as 'retinal ganglion cells'. 

Unfortunately, optic nerve damage and loss of these cells are usually permanent because they cannot spontaneously repair their connections to the brain, which leads to permanent visual impairment. Even with well-controlled eye pressure, many patients continue to experience worsening vision and further nerve cell damage.

What problem/knowledge gap does it help address?

Current treatments for glaucoma mainly focus on lowering the pressure inside the eye. While these treatments help keep the pressure steady and low, they fail to stop the disease progression and repair the damaged optic nerve and nerve cells. There are no treatments available that can rebuild the connections between the eye and the brain and stop the substantial loss of nerve cells.

Researchers have suggested that this regeneration failure is due to the presence of powerful internal growth barriers inside the injured retinal ganglion cells that prevent the regrowth of their nerve connections to the brain upon damage. By identifying these barriers, we could develop novel therapies to remove them, allowing the nerve connections to regrow again for improved vision restoration.

Aim of the research project

The team aims to determine if removing specific barriers to nerve growth can promote nerve connection regrowth after optic nerve injury. This will provide crucial data for securing funding to further develop this as a next-generation glaucoma therapy.

Potential impact on people with sight loss

This project could greatly improve our understanding of why adult nerve cells fail to regrow their connections to the brain. Over the next decade, future development of the current project to uncover the mechanisms underlying these specific barriers to regeneration could lead to new therapies that stop the disease progression and restore lost vision in glaucoma patients.