Cataract Dissolving Drugs-Lanosterol

The end of cataract surgery is seriously approaching as researchers in United States of America develop a new drug chemical that will basically shrink down and dissolve cataracts.


Cataract is a condition in which the crystalline lens loses its transparency and becomes opaque. It is the leading cause of human blindness affecting tens off millions of people  worldwide. The only treatment option for cataract is surgical removal and subsequent replacement with intraocular lens material. But now, a team comprising of ophthalmologists and scientists has tested a steroid-based eye drop in animals (dogs and rabbits) which was able to dissolve the cataracts.

The new drug is called Lanosterol which is a naturally-occurring steroid. The effectiveness of Lanosterol on cataracts was observed when researchers became aware of two Chinese children with congenital form of cataract which had never affected their parents. They discovered that these children have mutation that halted Lanosterol production but this mutation is completely absence in their parents.

So if the children weren't producing Lanosterol and did get cataracts but their parents were producing Lanosterol and didn't get cataracts. Thus, they proposed that lanosterol might stop the defective crystalline proteins from forming cataracts in the non-congenital form of the disease. The researchers produced lanosterol-based eye drop and tested it in three types of experiments.

First, they observed a decrease in the size of cataracts while working with the human lens in the lab.
They later tested the eye drop on rabbits and noticed a sharp decrease from severe cataracts to mild cataracts or no cataracts at all.
Finally, it was tested on dogs with naturally occurring cataracts and they responded positively to the eye drops with severe cataracts shrinking away to almost nothing.

Wonderful, right? But before you get too exited, remember that the research did not prove whether vision was actually improved in those animals. Only that the crystalline lens transparency was enhanced. But certainly, the research is a step in the right direction.
In addition, if the eye drop is effective in humans, then there is a possibility of using the lanosterol-based drugs to dissolve the clumsy crystallin and aggregates found in the brain of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients.

The researchers next step is to discover how Lanosterol-based eye drops are carrying out their shrinking response on the cataract proteins and to progress their research to human trials.