Retinal health: All eyes on vision loss 

Ulrike Graefe-Mody, our Global Head of Retinal Health, talks about our goal to stop preventable vision loss caused by diabetic retinopathy and other retinal diseases through earlier detection, intervention, and better treatments.

Ulrike, why is Boehringer Ingelheim focused on retinal diseases?

Our journey in retinal health builds on our heritage in developing innovative treatments for a range of cardio-renal-metabolic conditions, including diabetes. From all the complications that people with diabetes face, potential vision loss is one many fear the most. Vision is our window to the world – losing it can enormously impact our independence and how we connect with others. We know that diabetic retinopathy affects one in three people with diabetes and is the leading cause of preventable blindness in working-age people. We also know there is a lack of effective treatment options. And as we worked at finding solutions to this unmet patient need, we discovered our investigational diabetic retinopathy treatments had the potential to benefit even more patients with age-related retinal conditions like macular degeneration. 

What needs to change for people with retinal diseases?

By the time people are diagnosed, irreversible damage to the retina has often already occurred. For many retinal diseases, including diabetic retinopathy, geographic atrophy and wet age-related macular degeneration, there are limited or no treatment options available. Those that are, require frequent direct injections into the eye and have shown limited efficacy in real world settings.  Developing treatments that will improve patient outcomes requires a fundamental change in patient care. First, retinal diseases need to be detected earlier before irreversible damage occurs. Second, we need a better understanding of which patient will benefit most from what treatment and at what point in time. And third, we need more treatment choices that work in earlier disease states. We are working hard towards that change and partnering with the leading experts, academic and industry partners with the goal of preventing vision loss and protecting eyesight.

How can we achieve this change? And what is special about the way we’re doing things?

We’re trying to address the many different factors of retinal diseases by exploring new disease mechanisms and therapeutic concepts. We’ve used our internal expertise in cardiovascular diseases, inflammation and neuroscience to build a diverse retinal health pipeline focused on the three main drivers of retinal disease: neurodegeneration (when nerve cells in the eye start to break down or die), inflammation and vascular dysfunction (when the blood vessels start to fail or get blocked). In addition, we want to alleviate the treatment burden on patients by offering oral therapies and improving durability of treatments to minimize the need for eye injections.

We are also developing AI-assisted predictive analysis to make earlier detection possible and to become better at predicting how a disease will progress. We’ve established several strategic partnerships with leaders in ophthalmic digital technology to drive these innovations in the digital space.  Our collaboration with ZEISS Medical Technology is one key and recent example that will pave the way for the development of precision therapies and intervention before irreversible damage occurs.

What are you looking forward to this year?

First and foremost, I am looking forward to working together with my colleagues across the organization supporting retinal health with truly unwavering optimism and passion for improving patient’s lives. I’m looking forward to intense collaborations with our partners, such as ZEISS and the Ryan Initiative for Macular Research (RIMR) AMD Imaging Consortium, and to integrating the outputs from our partnerships into further development of our molecules.