A promising future for peptides in ophthalmology: work effectively and smartly

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology
• Pharmacology
• Biotechnology

Background:

• Current ocular disease treatments face challenges including inconvenience, trauma, cost, and poor visual outcomes.
• Therapeutic peptides, mimicking protein binding, are emerging as effective agents.
• Chemical modifications and bioengineering enhance peptide efficacy, stability, and druggability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent in vivo anti-angiogenic and anti-inflammatory therapeutic peptides for ocular diseases.
• To discuss strategies for discovering therapeutic peptides.
• To present current ophthalmic therapeutic peptide delivery methods.
• To introduce cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) for intraocular drug delivery via ocular surface administration.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of therapeutic peptides and cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) in ocular disease treatment.
• Analysis of in vivo animal studies for anti-angiogenic and anti-inflammatory peptide efficacy.
• Examination of peptide discovery and ophthalmic delivery strategies.
• Focus on CPPs for enhanced ocular drug penetration.

Main Results:

• Therapeutic peptides show potential for treating ocular diseases like those involving angiogenesis and inflammation.
• Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) demonstrate capability in traversing ocular barriers for drug delivery.
• Combined therapeutic peptide-CPP strategies offer a promising route for non-invasive ocular topical administration.
• Optimized peptide formulations could enable early intervention and long-term management of vision loss.

Conclusions:

• The combination of therapeutic peptides and CPPs presents an innovative strategy for effective and convenient ocular disease management.
• Non-invasive, cost-effective topical delivery of therapeutic peptides via CPPs can improve patient outcomes and prevent irreversible vision loss.
• Further research into these combined approaches holds significant promise for advancing ophthalmic therapeutics.