Exploring The Principles of Genetic Research In Genetic Eye Disease - Part 3/3 | Episode #20

Exploring The Principles of Genetic Research In Genetic Eye Disease - Part 3/3 | Episode #20

Welcome to part 3 of the conversation with Dr. Kimberly Drenser! This episode dives into CTR27, the basis for the idea behind Caeregen Therapeutics, the history of the company, and the work they've done to create medical solutions for retinal diseases. 

Your host, Dr. Patrick Droste dives into this captivating three-part series that covers innovative and promising research for the future. We invite you to share this episode with friends and family!

  • 0:00:10.0 Dr. Patrick Droste: Welcome to the Through Our Eyes podcast that takes you on a journey through the world of groundbreaking research with our special guest, Dr. Kimberly Drenser.

    0:00:19.1 Nicole Guidici: This has been fascinating. Thank you so much.

    0:00:21.6 Dr. Kimberly Drenser: Of course.

    0:00:22.9 PD: And thank you for your very good questions, Nicole, and that brings us a nice segue to part three. And you mentioned previously that CTR-27 was the idea for Caeregen Therapeutics Research. And when did Caeregen Therapeutics actually start?

    0:00:43.3 KD: So Caeregen Therapeutics started in... A long time ago. I think the very first company format was started in 2012. Now it certainly was not nearly as sophisticated as it is now. It's been in its current form for about the last five years, but it was started as a company in the early, what we call discovery phases of research, mainly to protect the invention and the development so that it would be something that would be attractive to investors and biotech companies to develop.

    0:01:26.3 PD: Is Caeregen studying any other potential drugs besides Noregen™? Do you see any, for example, medical treatments for familial exudative vitreoretinopathy or Coats' disease? Or as you mentioned, is Noregen™ going to be able to treat all three of these?

    0:01:48.1 KD: So right now, the way that it works is that because it's a small startup biotech company, there are limitations in how much discovery we can do. So really at this point, the focus is geared on the development of Noregen™ and Noregen™ as a therapeutic in other diseases and also developing the gene therapy of it. There is research being done, not directly through Caeregen, but this goes back to the biobank in... The power of the biobank, to investigate and do pilot studies on other eye diseases, such as Coats' disease. So Coats' disease is one of the big ones. It's a very, very frustrating disease, very poorly understood and very poorly managed for a lot of patients. And then there's also interest in neurodegenerative areas. There's very good evidence that you may have heard that they think that you can see and detect in the retina like Alzheimer's disease before you ever see any signs of Alzheimer's disease from a functional cognitive standpoint. There's evidence to show that we can actually do a lot with neurodegenerative diseases by understanding the degenerations that occur in the retina. So those are areas of what I would call still in the discovery research phase. But this is where Noregen™ was 10 years ago, was in the same discovery phase.

    0:03:25.4 PD: So there's a lot of potential, and this is our one focus now, but it has limitless ramifications to other forms of retinal disease, and that's the point I wanted to get across. Now, one of the things the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation is closely associated with the Oakland University Eye Center, and particularly Pediatric Retinal Research Laboratory or PRRL Lab, which was started by Dr. Tracey and Ropard and the precursors of the PRRF. One of the things that Oakland University has is called a Super Student Program. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

    0:04:04.6 KD: So the Super Student Program is a great program in that it's an undergraduate summer, competitive summer research program. So undergraduates who are interested in going into sciences or going into medicine can apply for this position. They're limited. I believe there are only five SUPER student positions each summer, and these students spend the summer doing a particular research project with a mentor in the Eye Research Institute. And they really, really do fantastic work. All of the SUPER students that I've ever interacted with have either gone on to be doctors, many of them ophthalmologists, or researchers, and have gone into... Have gotten a PhD or a master's degree and gone into the biotech world. And oftentimes, when they're still students, they'll take their skill and they'll work part-time and continue in the lab that they did their summer research with. And they gain just a world of experience with that. It's a fantastic program, both for us and for the students. They're motivated, they're smart, and they work very hard. So that there's it's an extra pair of hands in the labs.

    0:05:24.1 PD: How can our listeners learn more about these programs of retinal research, not only the Super Student Program, but also the Caeregen research that we're doing to work on neuro disease? How can they get involved financially or otherwise support these efforts?

    0:05:38.9 KD: So the best place to go as a starting base is the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation, which is pediatricrrf.org. And that really houses the links to the parent portals, to the... There's a donate link. Even with the donations, you can specify if you have a certain area of research that you're more interested in, or if it's general support. It's just a great networking basis on that website. I believe there's also a link there to Noregen™ and/or Caeregen Therapeutics. If not, you can also just go to caeregentherapeutics.com. And pull up the website there as well and we want everybody to donate.

    0:06:27.3 S1: You want everybody to donate. Are there any other questions? Nicole, do you have any questions? Luisa, can you comment a little bit about if someone was interested in donating to research in addition to what Dr. Drenser just said?

    0:06:43.4 Luisa: Hi, yes. Thank you. Yes. Anybody who would like to get involved or contribute, as Dr. Drenser mentioned, you can go to the pediatricrrf.org website. In there you'll find a link to make any type of donations, we offer one time or monthly subscription if you'd like, for lack of better terms. The other website that we'd like you to come and visit is the Caeregen, and that is C-A-E-R-E-G-E-N.com, caeregen.com would be the other site that you might be interested in donating or if you'd like to volunteer some time or you have a student in the medical program that would like to participate in the Super Student Program and apply for that, those would be the sites to go to. Thank you.

    0:07:33.1 KD: Andrea, do you have any suggestions? You're our marketing director. Do you have any things you want to contribute?

    0:07:41.4 Andrea: I think it's really been covered. We also have social media for all of these companies as well. Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation, Caeregen, that's where we post a lot of information, a lot of up-to-date information about what's going on.

    0:07:56.3 PD: Can you tell a little the public about how they can access some of our previous podcasts?

    0:08:01.9 Andrea: Yeah, so Through Our Eyes is the name of the podcast and they, there is a page on the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation website. There are also pages on Facebook and Instagram and Discord, and so they can also find any episodes there as well.

    0:08:19.8 PD: Thank you very much. That pretty much concludes our three-part research series on Through our Eyes Podcast. We hope you've enjoyed this deep dive into the world of research, particularly comments from Dr. Drenser and the other members of our team. You'll realize that we're all very committed to this. We went from the basic definitions to future possibilities with the development of future drugs. We want to emphasize that research is the backbone of progress and the pursuit of knowledge never ceases. We are all enthused. We are all passionate about curing eye disease and particularly having children and young adults have fruitful, effective, and well compensated lives. We've come this far thanks to donors of the PA Retinal Research Foundation. If you have any questions or any thoughts or ideas you would like to share, we would love to hear from you as Andrea just mentioned. Reach us through on our website or social media and please subscribe to our newsletter called Sightline gives us latest information on Pediatric Retinal Research. I would like to particularly thank Dr. Drenser. I'd like to thank Nicole Giudici our fundraising champion, Stephanie Seville, our executive director, Andrea Bennett, our marketing director, and Luisa Recchia, the podcast and support group director. Thank you very much.