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Preventing Glaucoma Vision Loss with ‘Big Data’

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

Credit: University of California San Diego

Each morning, more than 2 million Americans start their rise-and-shine routine by remembering to take their eye drops. The drops treat their open-angle glaucoma, the most-common form of the disease, caused by obstructed drainage of fluid where the eye’s cornea and iris meet. The slow drainage increases fluid pressure at the front of the eye. Meanwhile, at the back of the eye, fluid pushes on the optic nerve, causing its bundled fibers to fray and leading to gradual loss of side vision.

For many, the eye drops help to lower intraocular pressure and prevent vision loss. But for others, the drops aren’t sufficient and their intraocular pressure remains high. Such people will need next-level care, possibly including eye surgery, to reopen the clogged drainage ducts and slow this disease that disproportionately affects older adults and African Americans over age 40.

Sally Baxter
Credit: University of California San Diego

Sally Baxter, a physician-scientist with expertise in ophthalmology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), wants to learn how to predict who is at greatest risk for serious vision loss from open-angle and other forms of glaucoma. That way, they can receive more aggressive early care to protect their vision from this second-leading cause of blindness in the U.S..

To pursue this challenging research goal, Baxter has received a 2020 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award. Her research will build on the clinical observation that people with glaucoma frequently battle other chronic health problems, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. To learn more about how these and other chronic health conditions might influence glaucoma outcomes, Baxter has begun mining a rich source of data: electronic health records (EHRs).

In an earlier study of patients at UCSD, Baxter showed that EHR data helped to predict which people would need glaucoma surgery within the next six months [1]. The finding suggested that the EHR, especially information on a patient’s blood pressure and medications, could predict the risk for worsening glaucoma.

In her NIH-supported work, she’s already extended this earlier “Big Data” finding by analyzing data from more than 1,200 people with glaucoma who participate in NIH’s All of Us Research Program [2]. With consent from the participants, Baxter used their EHRs to train a computer to find telltale patterns within the data and then predict with 80 to 99 percent accuracy who would later require eye surgery.

The findings confirm that machine learning approaches and EHR data can indeed help in managing people with glaucoma. That’s true even when the EHR data don’t contain any information specific to a person’s eye health.

In fact, the work of Baxter and other groups have pointed to an especially important role for blood pressure in shaping glaucoma outcomes. Hoping to explore this lead further with the support of her Early Independence Award, Baxter also will enroll patients in a study to test whether blood-pressure monitoring smart watches can add important predictive information on glaucoma progression. By combining round-the-clock blood pressure data with EHR data, she hopes to predict glaucoma progression with even greater precision. She’s also exploring innovative ways to track whether people with glaucoma use their eye drops as prescribed, which is another important predictor of the risk of irreversible vision loss [3].

Glaucoma research continues to undergo great progress. This progress ranges from basic research to the development of new treatments and high-resolution imaging technologies to improve diagnostics. But Baxter’s quest to develop practical clinical tools hold great promise, too, and hopefully will help one day to protect the vision of millions of people with glaucoma around the world.

References:

[1] Machine learning-based predictive modeling of surgical intervention in glaucoma using systemic data from electronic health records. Baxter SL, Marks C, Kuo TT, Ohno-Machado L, Weinreb RN. Am J Ophthalmol. 2019 Dec; 208:30-40.

[2] Predictive analytics for glaucoma using data from the All of Us Research Program. Baxter SL, Saseendrakumar BR, Paul P, Kim J, Bonomi L, Kuo TT, Loperena R, Ratsimbazafy F, Boerwinkle E, Cicek M, Clark CR, Cohn E, Gebo K, Mayo K, Mockrin S, Schully SD, Ramirez A, Ohno-Machado L; All of Us Research Program Investigators. Am J Ophthalmol. 2021 Jul;227:74-86.

[3] Smart electronic eyedrop bottle for unobtrusive monitoring of glaucoma medication adherence. Aguilar-Rivera M, Erudaitius DT, Wu VM, Tantiongloc JC, Kang DY, Coleman TP, Baxter SL, Weinreb RN. Sensors (Basel). 2020 Apr 30;20(9):2570.

Links:

Glaucoma (National Eye Institute/NIH)

All of Us Research Program (NIH)

Video: Sally Baxter (All of Us Research Program)

Sally Baxter (University of California San Diego)

Baxter Project Information (NIH RePORTER)

NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (Common Fund)

NIH Support: Common Fund


How Mucus Tames Microbes

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

Scanning EM of mucus
Credit: Katharina Ribbeck, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

Most of us think of mucus as little more than slimy and somewhat yucky stuff that’s easily ignored until you come down with a cold like the one I just had. But, when it comes to our health, there’s much more to mucus than you might think.

Mucus covers the moist surfaces of the human body, including the eyes, nostrils, lungs, and gastrointestinal tract. In fact, the average person makes more than a liter of mucus each day! It houses trillions of microbes and serves as a first line of defense against the subset of those microorganisms that cause infections. For these reasons, NIH-funded researchers, led by Katharina Ribbeck, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, are out to gain a greater understanding of the biology of healthy mucus—and then possibly use that knowledge to develop new therapeutics.

Ribbeck’s team used a scanning electron microscope to take the image of mucus you see above. You’ll notice right away that mucus doesn’t look like simple slime at all. In fact, if you could zoom into this complex web, you’d discover it’s made up of mucin proteins and glycans, which are sugar molecules that resemble bottle brushes.

Ribbeck and her colleagues recently discovered that the glycans in healthy mucus play a long-overlooked role in “taming” bacteria that might make us ill [1]. This work builds on their previous findings that mucus interferes with bacterial behavior, preventing these bugs from attaching to surfaces and communicating with each other [2].

In their new study, published in Nature Microbiology, Ribbeck, lead author Kelsey Wheeler, and their colleagues studied mucus and its interactions with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This bacterium is a common cause of serious lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis or compromised immune systems.

The researchers found that in the presence of glycans, P. aeruginosa was rendered less harmful and infectious. The bacteria also produced fewer toxins. The findings show that it isn’t just that microbes get trapped in a tangled web within mucus, but rather that glycans have a special ability to moderate the bugs’ behavior. The researchers also have evidence of similar interactions between mucus and other microorganisms, such as those responsible for yeast infections.

The new study highlights an intriguing strategy to tame, rather than kill, bacteria to manage infections. In fact, Ribbeck views mucus and its glycans as a therapeutic gold mine. She hopes to apply what she’s learned to develop artificial mucus as an anti-microbial therapeutic for use inside and outside the body. Not bad for a substance that you might have thought was nothing more than slimy stuff.

References:

[1] Mucin glycans attenuate the virulence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in infection. Wheeler KM, Cárcamo-Oyarce G, Turner BS, Dellos-Nolan S, Co JY, Lehoux S, Cummings RD, Wozniak DJ, Ribbeck K. Nat Microbiol. 2019 Oct 14.

[2] Mucins trigger dispersal of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms. Co JY, Cárcamo-Oyarce, Billings N, Wheeler KM, Grindy SC, Holten-Andersen N, Ribbeck K. NPJ Biofilms Microbiomes. 2018 Oct 10;4:23.

Links:

Cystic Fibrosis (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute/NIH)

Video: Chemistry in Action—Katharina Ribbeck (YouTube)

Katharina Ribbeck (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge)

NIH Support: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering; National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; National Institute of General Medical Sciences; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases


Moving Closer to a Stem Cell-Based Treatment for AMD

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

In recent years, researchers have figured out how to take a person’s skin or blood cells and turn them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that offer tremendous potential for regenerative medicine. Still, it’s been a challenge to devise safe and effective ways to move this discovery from the lab into the clinic. That’s why I’m pleased to highlight progress toward using iPSC technology to treat a major cause of vision loss: age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

In the new work, researchers from NIH’s National Eye Institute developed iPSCs from blood-forming stem cells isolated from blood donated by people with advanced AMD [1]. Next, these iPSCs were exposed to a variety of growth factors and placed on supportive scaffold that encouraged them to develop into healthy retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) tissue, which nurtures the light-sensing cells in the eye’s retina. The researchers went on to show that their lab-grown RPE patch could be transplanted safely into animal models of AMD, preventing blindness in the animals.

This preclinical work will now serve as the foundation for a safety trial of iPSC-derived RPE transplants in 12 human volunteers who have already suffered vision loss due to the more common “dry” form of AMD, for which there is currently no approved treatment. If all goes well, the NIH-led trial may begin enrolling patients as soon as this year.

Risk factors for AMD include a combination of genetic and environmental factors, including age and smoking. Currently, more than 2 million Americans have vision-threatening AMD, with millions more having early signs of the disease [2].

AMD involves progressive damage to the macula, an area of the retina about the size of a pinhead, made up of millions of light-sensing cells that generate our sharp, central vision. Though the exact causes of AMD are unknown, RPE cells early on become inflamed and lose their ability to clear away debris from the retina. This leads to more inflammation and progressive cell death.

As RPE cells are lost during the “dry” phase of the disease, light-sensing cells in the macula also start to die and reduce central vision. In some people, abnormal, leaky blood vessels will form near the macula, called “wet” AMD, spilling fluid and blood under the retina and causing significant vision loss. “Wet” AMD has approved treatments. “Dry” AMD does not.

But, advances in iPSC technology have brought hope that it might one day be possible to shore up degenerating RPE in those with dry AMD, halting the death of light-sensing cells and vision loss. In fact, preliminary studies conducted in Japan explored ways to deliver replacement RPE to the retina [3]. Though progress was made, those studies highlighted the need for more reliable ways to produce replacement RPE from a patient’s own cells. The Japanese program also raised concerns that iPSCs derived from people with AMD might be prone to cancer-causing genomic changes.

With these challenges in mind, the NEI team led by Kapil Bharti and Ruchi Sharma have designed a more robust process to produce RPE tissue suitable for testing in people. As described in Science Translational Medicine, they’ve come up with a three-step process.

Rather than using fibroblast cells from skin as others had done, Bharti and Sharma’s team started with blood-forming stem cells from three AMD patients. They reprogrammed those cells into “banks” of iPSCs containing multiple different clones, carefully screening them to ensure that they were free of potentially cancer-causing changes.

Next, those iPSCs were exposed to a special blend of growth factors to transform them into RPE tissue. That recipe has been pursued by other groups for a while, but needed to be particularly precise for this human application. In order for the tissue to function properly in the retina, the cells must assemble into a uniform sheet, just one-cell thick, and align facing in the same direction.

So, the researchers developed a specially designed scaffold made of biodegradable polymer nanofibers. That scaffold helps to ensure that the cells orient themselves correctly, while also lending strength for surgical transplantation. By spreading a single layer of iPSC-derived RPE progenitors onto their scaffolds and treating it with just the right growth factors, the researchers showed they could produce an RPE patch ready for the clinic in about 10 weeks.

To test the viability of the RPE patch, the researchers first transplanted a tiny version (containing about 2,500 RPE cells) into the eyes of a rat with a compromised immune system, which enables human cells to survive. By 10 weeks after surgery, the human replacement tissue had integrated into the animals’ retinas with no signs of toxicity.

Next, the researchers tested a larger RPE patch (containing 70,000 cells) in pigs with an AMD-like condition. This patch is the same size the researchers ultimately would expect to use in people. Ten weeks after surgery, the RPE patch had integrated into the animals’ eyes, where it protected the light-sensing cells that are so critical for vision, preventing blindness.

These results provide encouraging evidence that the iPSC approach to treating dry AMD should be both safe and effective. But only a well-designed human clinical trial, with all the appropriate prior oversights to be sure the benefits justify the risks, will prove whether or not this bold approach might be the solution to blindness faced by millions of people in the future.

As the U.S. population ages, the number of people with advanced AMD is expected to rise. With continued progress in treatment and prevention, including iPSC technology and many other promising approaches, the hope is that more people with AMD will retain healthy vision for a lifetime.

References:

[1] Clinical-grade stem cell-derived retinal pigment epithelium patch rescues retinal degeneration in rodents and pigs. Sharma R, Khristov V, Rising A, Jha BS, Dejene R, Hotaling N, Li Y, Stoddard J, Stankewicz C, Wan Q, Zhang C, Campos MM, Miyagishima KJ, McGaughey D, Villasmil R, Mattapallil M, Stanzel B, Qian H, Wong W, Chase L, Charles S, McGill T, Miller S, Maminishkis A, Amaral J, Bharti K. Sci Transl Med. 2019 Jan 16;11(475).

[2] Age-Related Macular Degeneration, National Eye Institute.

[3] Autologous Induced Stem-Cell-Derived Retinal Cells for Macular Degeneration. Mandai M, Watanabe A, Kurimoto Y, Hirami Y, Takasu N, Ogawa S, Yamanaka S, Takahashi M, et al. N Engl J Med. 2017 Mar 16;376(11):1038-1046.

Links:

Facts About Age-Related Macular Degeneration (National Eye Institute/NIH)

Stem Cell-Based Treatment Used to Prevent Blindness in Animal Models of Retinal Degeneration (National Eye Institute/NIH)

Kapil Bharti (NEI)

NIH Support: National Eye Institute; Common Fund


A Ray of Molecular Beauty from Cryo-EM

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

Rhodopsin

Credit: Subramaniam Lab, National Cancer Institute, NIH

Walk into a dark room, and it takes a minute to make out the objects, from the wallet on the table to the sleeping dog on the floor. But after a few seconds, our eyes are able to adjust and see in the near-dark, thanks to a protein called rhodopsin found at the surface of certain specialized cells in the retina, the thin, vision-initiating tissue that lines the back of the eye.

This illustration shows light-activating rhodopsin (orange). The light photons cause the activated form of rhodopsin to bind to its protein partner, transducin, made up of three subunits (green, yellow, and purple). The binding amplifies the visual signal, which then streams onward through the optic nerve for further processing in the brain—and the ability to avoid tripping over the dog.


Guarding Against Glaucoma: What Can We Do?

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

Chart showing the theoretical increase in the number of cases of Glaucoma, 2010-2050
Source: National Eye Institute, NIH

This graph provides a frightening look at a problem that could threaten the vision of more than 6 million Americans by 2050: glaucoma. Glaucoma is a group of diseases that damage the eye’s optic nerve — a bundle of 1 million-plus nerve fibers connecting the light-sensitive retina to the brain — and that can lead to vision loss and blindness.

NIH research is trying to change this picture by developing better strategies for treatment and prevention. But you can also help. How? By getting your eyes checked regularly.

With early detection and treatment, serious vision loss can often be prevented. Anyone can develop glaucoma, but some folks are at higher risk:

  • African Americans over age 40
  • Everyone over age 60, especially Mexican Americans
  • People with a family history of glaucoma

Glaucoma often has no symptoms until a lot of damage has already been done.  So the best way to prevent a bad outcome from glaucoma is by undergoing a simple eye exam that can be done by an ophthalmologist or an optometrist — at least once every 2 years for people in high-risk groups.

Source: National Eye Institute, NIH