Cash help for eye treatment venture

Nov 21 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

NEW technology being developed to deliver sight-saving treatment to the inside of the eye has won almost £160,000 in grants to develop the idea commercially in Northumberland.

Ophthalmologist and medical researcher Dr Alan Whitmore set up Lumemed Ltd to take forward his idea of treating blindness-causing common conditions using light and magnetic fields. Currently, the only available treatment uses a needle to inject drugs into the eye, which can affect the surrounding tissues.

Dr Whitmore, a qualified GP based near Hexham, received a £99,000 R&D grant from One North East and a pledge of £60,000 from NorthStar Equity Investors’ Proof of Concept fund to develop his treatment.

He said: “One of the greatest problems facing ophthalmologists trying to treat potentially blinding diseases is the difficulty of achieving safe and effective drug delivery to the various structures within the eye without producing serious side effects and complications. Often the only option is an eye injection.

“While relatively rare, complications of intraocular injection such as infection, haemorrhage and retinal detachment can be disastrous for the patient and the more injections are done, the more likely they become. This seriously limits the circumstances in which current treatments for things like macular degeneration can be used.”

Dr Whitmore developed his treatment, which uses a nanotechnology method to deliver drugs inside the eye, to overcome these problems. If commercially successful, it could be used to catch eye problems at a much earlier stage.