The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) announced that researchers at the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Maryland completed a multicenter human clinical trial treating diabetic macular edema with mecamylamine, a topical drug developed by the biotech company CoMentis, Inc. Funding for the study was provided by JDRF through its Industry Drug Development Partnership program.Diabetic macular edema is a complication of a specific region of the retina in the eye, called the macula, that develops when small blood vessels become leaky such that fluid accumulates. Without treatment, diabetic macular edema can cause vision impairment, blurriness, or blindness. Early-stage human clinical trials showed that a new topical drug was safe and had biological effects in a type of diabetic eye disease, and may offer researchers a new approach to prevent and treat diabetic macular edema.
The results were published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology.
