Pre-clinical development of novel oral plasma kallikrein inhibitors for the treatment of diabetic macular edema

视网膜病变(眼后部视网膜血管受损)是糖尿病的一种严重而常见的并发症，可导致失明。其中一个主要问题是血管变得漏水，这使得液体逃逸并在视网膜中积聚。治疗方法的选择是有限的；激光治疗是常用的，或者是将已知的防止渗漏的药物注射到眼睛中，尽管这并不适用于每个患者。最近，KalVista的科学家们表明，大量名为血浆激肽释放酶的蛋白质会导致血管泄漏，一种可以有效阻断血浆激肽释放酶的药物可能成为视网膜病变的突破性治疗方法。KalVista是一家制药公司，对血浆激肽释放酶进行了广泛的研究，并提议利用这一经验开发一种口服药物，该药物将阻断血浆激肽释放酶的作用，这可能会导致一种全新的治疗这种虚弱和毁灭性疾病的方法。

Retinopathy (damage to blood vessels in the retina at the back of the eye) is a serious and common complication of diabetes that can lead to blindness. One of the main problems is that the blood vessels become leaky which allows fluid to escape and accumulate in the retina. There are a limited number of treatment options; laser therapy is commonly used, or alternatively injections into the eye of drugs known to prevent leakiness, although this doesn’t work for every patient. Recently KalVista scientists showed that large amounts of a protein called plasma kallikrein causes the blood vessel leakiness and that a drug which can block plasma kallikrein effectively could become a breakthrough treatment for retinopathy. KalVista is a pharmaceutical company that has extensively studied plasma kallikrein and is proposing to use this experience to develop an oral drug that will block the action of plasma kallikrein which could lead to a brand new treatment for this debilitating and devastating disease.