Gene therapy strategies in glaucoma and application for steroid-induced hypertension

Gene therapy of the eye has a high potential of becoming the preferred treatment of a number of eye diseases. Because of its easy accessibility, all the tissues of the eye can be reached and genetically manipulated with nowadays standard gene delivery technologies. Gene therapy offers the possibility to do both, correct a genetic defect by replacing the mutated or missing gene and that of using genes as drugs. Gene drugs would be more specific and would have a longer duration of action and less toxicity than conventional drugs. Examples of both applications are beginning to emerge. Using gene replacement, vision has been restored in several patients of Leber congenital amaurosis (Maguire et al., 2009). Some gene drugs, such as siRNA, are currently in clinical trials to silence angiogenic factors in macular degeneration (Campa and Harding, 2011). In this manuscript we first give a short overview of the basics of gene therapy in the eye and then review the ongoing preclinical studies in our laboratory for the gene-drug treatment of steroid-induced ocular hypertension.