Life Biosciences has announced a breakthrough in genetic vision therapy, significantly restoring visual function in non-human primates (NHP) with laser-induced eye damage.
The team used special chemicals injected into the primates’ eyes, partially reprogramming cells to a more youthful state.
Life Biosciences is a biotechnology company advancing innovative cellular rejuvenation technologies to reverse diseases of ageing and injury and ultimately restore health for patients.
The epigenetic programming approach had been shown to reverse ageing, improve vision, and extend lifespan in mice, but whether it would work in primates was not known.
The data… represents an important step forward toward enabling human clinical trials to potentially treat a variety of ophthalmic disorders and other diseases of ageing
However, researchers at Life Biosciences and academic researchers, including Dr Bruce Ksander and Australian Dr David Sinclair, both from Harvard University, reported that the therapy significantly restored visual function in an NHP model of non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), a disorder similar to a stroke of the eye that is characterised by painless yet sudden loss of vision.
Important Step Toward Human Trials
The data, presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) 2023 conference in New Orleans, represents an important step forward toward enabling human clinical trials to potentially treat a variety of ophthalmic disorders and other diseases of ageing.
Life Bio’s lead platform reprograms the epigenome of older animals to resemble that of younger animals via expression of three Yamanaka factors, Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4, collectively known as OSK. The approach partially reprograms cells to resemble a more youthful state while retaining their original cellular identity.
Previous data from Life Bio and academic researchers, which were also presented at ARVO 2023, have shown that treatment with OSK reverses retinal ageing and restores vision in old mice in a mouse model of glaucoma.
Now, with the additional data presented at ARVO, the researchers have demonstrated restoration of visual function and increased nerve axon survival in an NHP model that mimics human NAION deficits in retinal ganglion cells.
Lead presenter of the study, Dr Ksander, who is Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Co-Director of the Ocular Oncology Center of Excellence at Harvard Medical School, said the study results have the potential to unlock “new opportunities for cellular rejuvenation, not just in NAION but in other ophthalmic diseases that occur as a result of retinal ganglion cell dysfunction as we age”.
