Tell us about yourself and your work.
I was always very interested in microsurgery and interested in fixing things with my hands. I did some research in neurosurgery as well. But really, the eye is an extension of the brain in terms of the neural tissues in the eye, and I felt like I could make similar contributions in eye surgery. I liked the surgery, and I witnessed taking someone through the eyesight journey – either bringing a blind patient’s vision back or preserving it if it was at risk of being lost. There is no greater joy for me. Today, with all the other hats I wear, it’s still a miracle to me the things that we can do to bring sight to patients.
Who does your work impact?
A lot of our research programs are built around finding solutions to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD) at all stages of the disease.
When you look at AMD, we have a registry of over 2,000 patients that we have followed for up to 12 years. We live in a world of big data, and there are a lot of things you can learn by observation of patients over a period of time. The registry has identified several overactive inflammatory pathways in the body that drive a more rapid progression of AMD. Our science has validated the direction that many big pharmaceutical companies are pursuing, which is targeting one of the pathways we identified as being overactive in patients who get advanced disease quicker.
You need to have a group of patients who are going to get worse in 24 or 36 months before you can study an AMD drug. We’re identifying the high-risk group so we can apply new therapeutics in a clinical trial to see if a certain drug works, and if it does, we can extrapolate it to more patients who have the slower-acting disease. No one else has a registry of our size and follows patients over this length of time, so that’s a nation-leading contribution.
Your department is also working on retinal cell regeneration to restore sight. How is that research helping patients with blinding diseases?
We’ve developed a program called CellSight, which is led by Valeria Canto-Soler, PhD. Val and her team are working to develop a retinal-pigmented epithelium (RPE) photoreceptor transplant that’s really second to none. I’ll give you an example of how important the project is. The NIH had a prize called the 3D Retinal Organoid Challenge with three prizes given in the U.S. – $500,000, $250,000 and $150,000. Our principal investigators won first and second prize. We’re putting the quality of the organoids we’re building into a complex 3D retinal transplant that we think is commercially viable. We’re leveraging the strengths of the CU Anschutz Medical Campus and the Gates Institute, which has deep expertise in regulatory and other aspects of the commercialization process. We have a partnership with the Gates Biomanufacturing Facility, and it’s basically a marriage of those entities on campus that’s creating a path for these products.
In addition to our AMD and ocular stem-cell research, our third area of emphasis is advancing the use of artificial intelligence in ophthalmology. We recruited Jayashree Kalpathy-Cramer, PhD, whose research is focused on trying to develop imaging systems that can upscale the workforce in ophthalmology that evaluates patients. It’s expected in the next decade we’ll be at least 35% short in the number of eye care providers we have in this country, so we need to develop modalities that can image the eye, diagnose disease and partner with non-surgeons and even mid-level providers. In an environment where we’re resource-constrained in terms of human capital of ophthalmologists, we need to explore the options of filling the gap with technology.
Kalpathy-Cramer is also using AI-powered screening tools to detect diabetic retinopathy and retinopathy of prematurity, a potentially blinding disease affecting premature infants.
What is something on the horizon that excites you?
Spyglass Pharma is a company that spun off from our department, and the technology was developed by Malik Kahook, MD, one of our full-time faculty. The science was built around his work, and then we funded portions of the intellectual property and the earliest prototype phases of the project. Then it was spun out, and venture capital funded it.
It has raised over $200 million in the private sector and is in phase three clinical trials for an intraocular lens that is implanted during cataract surgery that elutes drugs for glaucoma and, hopefully eventually, other diseases. As with the Kahook Dual Blade, another of Malik’s inventions that was designed for minimally invasive glaucoma surgery, it wouldn’t have happened without the strengths of this campus. We’ll see where it goes. We will know more in this coming year, but that’s one of the things I’m excited about.
What does it mean to you and those you serve to be part of the CU Anschutz community?
A lot of the things we’re doing, we couldn’t have done anywhere else. It’s the collaboration between the department, the Gates Institute and the biomanufacturing facility – plus the partnerships we’ve built on campus between the artificial intelligence and big data community – that allow us to draw this rich data about our patients from the hospital side to a secure, accessible, local computing environment. We also have basic scientists and the discovery-based departments at the School of Medicine working alongside us. All of these pieces don’t just happen on an island. They happen at great academic medical centers like this one.
Plus, our relationship with UCHealth and Children’s Hospital Colorado – they’re indirectly investing in our clinical research and infrastructures. They’re investing in our science through multiple mechanisms so that we can find cures for patients. Those relationships make this place, the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, exemplary.
Note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.
