A research group led by Professor Toru Nakazawa at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine has confirmed neuroprotective efficacy of Calpain inhibitor for animal model of glaucoma.

 

 Glaucoma is a disease that afflicts 5% of people over 40 years old and the current leading cause of blindness. Since it is a big social loss that adults in their prime become blind, researches on treatment for glaucoma are very important to prevent blindness. As 10% of people over 70 years old are affected with glaucoma, it is expected that more and more people might be affected with glaucoma along with low birthrate and longevity. All of current treatment methods for glaucoma had been focused on lowering eye pressure, and no other treatment method had been proposed. Since 70% of Japanese patients with glaucoma have a normal range of intraocular pressure (IOP), unlike patients in foreign countries, it is particularly important to develop new treatment methods for Japanese glaucoma, except decreasing IOP.

 

 Since the clinical condition of glaucoma is “retinal ganglion cell death accompanied with the cupping of optic nerve head,” the research group has launched to develop neuroprotective treatment suppressing the cell death, and has revealed the efficacy of Calpain inhibitor SNJ-1945, by using it for mice of glaucoma model in this study.

 

 This research has been conducted in collaboration with Senior Team Leader Takaomi Saido and Staff Scientist Jiro Takano at Laboratory for Proteolytic Neuroscience, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Professor Toru Nakazawa and Assistant Professor Morin Ryu at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine. For this research, Calpain inhibitor SNJ-1945 has been provided from Senju Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. This research has been supported by Grants-in-Aid for Young Scientist (A) of Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

 

 The research result has been published online in Journal of Neuroscience Research on November 8, 2011. The paper’s title is “The critical role of calpain in axonal damage-induced retinal ganglion cell death”.

 

 

More information (Japanese)

 

 

[Contact]

(About the research)

Professor Toru Nakazawa

Advanced Ophthalmic Medicine

Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine

TEL: +81-22-717-7294

E-mail: ntoru*oph.med.tohoku.ac.jp (Replace * with @)

 

(Public Relations)

Associate professor Fuji Nagami

Public Relations Office of Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine

Tel: +81-22-717-7908

Fax: +81-22-717-8187

E-mail: f-nagami*med.tohoku.ac.jp (Replace * with @)