Hold on! What’s this say…?
Oh! It says “I’m Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.”
Whoof. Getting old is hard on your eyes.
But! Alexandra Bernardo-Colón and team at the National Eye Institute just might keep blindness at bay.
Aging and disease cause the death of eye cells, leading to vision loss. Your eyes reduce cell death with a protein called PEDF.
The researchers made an eyedrop version of PEDF. They tested its effects on mice that had vision loss.
In untreated mice, about half of their eye cells died. But in mice that got eye drops, only a quarter of the cells died!
When it comes to stopping blindness, these eye drops are part of the vision!
Reference: Bernardo-Colón, A., Bighinati, A., Parween, S. et al. H105A peptide eye drops promote photoreceptor survival in murine and human models of retinal degeneration. Commun Med 5, 81 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43856-025-00789-8