As the last Brain Star Award Feature of this series, we are proud to present the first place winner of the 2024 competition, Dr. Sergio Crespo-Garcia. He is also the winner of the Marlene-Reimer Award for 2024. Congratulations!
Discovery of a new therapeutic avenue to protect vision in diabetic patients.
Diabetes is a silent epidemic with profound complications in the retina, including a profound visual impairment that robs individuals of their ability to connect with the world around them. Dr. Sergio Crespo-Garcia, working as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Przemyslaw (Mike) Sapieha at the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital Research Center, has identified a novel therapeutic strategy aimed at reversing diabetic macular edema (DME), a pervasive blinding condition in diabetic patients. This new therapeutic approach has the potential to be applied to other neurodegenerative diseases.
Specifically, Dr. Crespo-Garcia and his colleagues investigated the role of cell aging (senescence) in the development of diabetic macular edema (DME). They showed that senescent cells play a critical role in driving leakage from blood vessels and neuroinflammation of the retina leading to retinal damage in diabetes. Further, they identified a protein, called B-cell lymphoma extra-large (BCL-xL), as a potential target to selectively eliminate senescent cells. By employing foselutoclax (UBX1325), a small molecule drug, they demonstrated reduction in retinal neuroinflammation and improvement in vascular and neuronal function. Importantly, these preclinical data translated to human trials where patients enrolled in the Phase 1 trial showed a gain in visual acuity – these were patients for whom other treatments were no longer beneficial. Most excitingly, Phase 2 trials are currently underway, and could transform the way we protect vision in diabetic patients.
Read the full story here: https://can-acn.org/brain-star-award-winner-sergio-crespo-garcia/
Read the full scientific publication here:
Crespo-Garcia S, Fournier F, Diaz-Marin R, Klier S, Ragusa D, Masaki L, Cagnone G, Blot G, Hafiane I, Dejda A, Rizk R, Juneau R, Buscarlet M, Chorfi S, Patel P, Beltran PJ, Joyal JS, Rezende FA, Hata M, Nguyen A, Sullivan L, Damiano J, Wilson AM, Mallette FA, David NE, Ghosh A, Tsuruda PR, Dananberg J, Sapieha P. Therapeutic targeting of cellular senescence in diabetic macular edema: preclinical and phase 1 trial results. Nature Medicine 2024 Feb;30(2):443-454. doi: 10.1038/s41591-024-02802-4. Epub 2024 Feb 6. PMID: 38321220.