Split Reaction

Two people with the same condition might respond very differently to the same treatment. It’s a source of huge frustration for patients and doctors alike, so researchers are investigating why anti-VEGF therapies, which can improve vision in patients with the eye condition neovascular age-related macular degeneration by reducing the overproduction of VEGF protein, work in some patients but not others. A team compared protein levels in the eye fluid of patients undergoing treatment and found that the drugs can inadvertently trigger overproduction of another protein that may worsen the condition. When a factor (called HIF-1α, red in the mouse eye section pictured) that typically boosts this other culprit was blocked, both proteins were better managed and the conventional treatments worked better in animal models, raising hopes for more effective treatments for all.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Deepti Sharma and colleagues
• Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), November 2024