The team – made up of researchers from Wayne State University, the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine – used dendrimer nanoparticles to deliver the drugs to damaged cells in rats’ eyes.
They found that, upon intravitreal administration, the dendrimers – a non-cytotoxic polymer – selectively targeted the damaged outer retinal microglia that causes the conditions, leaving retina of healthy controls in tact.
The degenerating retina then retained the nanoparticle for at least one month, and released the medication in a sustained manner.
In the study, titled ‘Dendrimer-based targeted intravitreal therapy for sustained attenuation of neuroinflammation in retinal degeneration’, lead authors Raymond Iezzi, of the Mayo Clinic, and John Hopkins’ Rangaramanujam Kannan, wrote: “These studies suggest that dendrimers (with no targeting ligands) have an intrinsic ability to selectively localize in activated microglia, and can deliver drugs inside these cells for a sustained period for the treatment of retinal neuroinflammation.”