ARVO LIVE: lysyl oxidase and stiffening blood vessels in the eye

Ophthalmology Times® talked with Kaustubh Ghosh, PhD, about lysyl oxidase, a recently discovered molecule that causes the blood vessels in the eye to become stiffer at this year's ARVO meeting.

Video transcript

Editor’s note: Transcript lightly edited for clarity.

Kaustubh Ghosh, PhD:

My name is Kaustubh Ghosh. I'm an associate professor of ophthalmology at UCLA and a principal investigator at the Doheny Eye Institute. And, the work that we presented at this ARVO, it focuses on this one particular molecule called lysyl oxidase that we recently discovered, causes the blood vessels in the eye to become stiffer. In other words, normal retinal blood vessels that feel like a plastic straw, become stiffer and feel like a hard plumbing pipe.

And this change in the stiffness of the blood vessels in the eye, causes them to degenerate very quickly. So, we found the mechanism meaning the molecular mechanism that causes the blood vessels to become stiffer. Our studies in mice show that if we block this particular molecule, the blood vessels do not become stiffer, and by preventing the stiffening, we can also rescue these blood vessels from degeneration that is characteristic of diabetes and aging.

We're now trying to identify therapeutic drugs that can block this vascular stiffening and the subsequent mechanical biological processes that result from this increase in stiffness so that we can develop new therapies for clinical management, more effective clinical management of diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration.