Significant funding from Business Finland for retinopathy treatment research

The DrugTech Vision -project from the University of Eastern Finland has been selected into Business Finland’s One Health program. The project is led by GeneCellNano PIs, Professor Arto Urtti and Docent Kirsi Rilla. The DrugTech Vision -project focuses on the development of new technology for the treatment and prevention of retinal diseases. The funding for the three-year-program is over 690 000 €, from Business Finland and six companies.

Retinal diseases, which cause progressive vision loss and blindness, affect over 300 million people world-wide. Loss of retinal cells and the generation of new leaky blood vessels are the central mechanisms of ocular diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. The DrugTech Vision -project takes a multidisciplinary approach to develop next-generation treatments for these patients by combining pharmaceutical chemistry and the use of extracellular vesicles and biomaterials to target long-lasting drug delivery to the retina. Modern analytics, patient samples, AI, and preclinical models will all be used in the research.

For more information, see the UEF press release (in Finnish).