The role of pharmacogenetics and advances in gene therapy in the treatment of diabetic retinopathy

Review by Dong Nguyen et al. from University of Nebraska Medical Center (Omaha, NE, USA) discusses the role of pharmacogenetics and advances in gene therapy for the treatment of diabetic retinopathy.

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) and its complications (e.g., diabetic macular edema) are a significant cause for legal blindness in the developed world and therefore a major health concern. Furthermore, there is increasing literature evidence indicating pharmacogenetics as a possible treatment approach for diabetic retinopathy, and a number of potential gene therapies for diabetic retinopathy are under investigation in preclinical murine diabetic models.

This Pharmacogenomics Review by Aniruddha Agarwal, Sally A Ingham, Keegan A Harkins, Diana V Do and Quan Dong Nguyen (University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA) presents different gene therapies being investigated and discusses the preliminary results, concluding that results from gene delivery using recombinant adenoviral vectors in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats are promising and warrant further research with human subjects.

Aniruddha Agarwal, Sally A Ingham, Keegan A Harkins, Diana V Do and Quan Dong Nguyen. The role of pharmacogenetics and advances in gene therapy in the treatment of diabetic retinopathy. Pharmacogenomics 7(3), 309—320 (2016).