[Glaucoma neuroprotection--how far is it from a dream to reality]

Although the drugs, such as Memantine, Calpain, Erythropoietin, have demonstrated exciting results for neuroprotection in laboratories, the phase III clinical trial of Memantine failed to prove such activity. So far, none of neuroprotection drugs has been approved by FDA for clinical use with the failure of Memantine clinical trail indicating that the gap between basic science research and clinical application in glaucomatous optic neuroprotection remains to be filled. This paper offers a new insight into the field of neuroprotection in glaucoma. To make the dream of optic neuroprotection to reality, we have to implement new perspective strategies to integrate technologies and findings from the researches of human genomics, proteomics, stem cells, and gene-transferred animal models.