The Johns Hopkins University has entered into a five-year agreement with Bayer HealthCare to develop drugs to treat diseases of the eye.
Under the agreement, researchers at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins and Bayer will work together to study things such as biomarkers for back-of-the-eye diseases with few available treatments.
The two organizations will both contribute staff and infrastructure. Bayer will have an exclusive option to any results. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The hope is that by working together treatment advancements will happen more quickly.
"There is a critical need for new therapies that treat a variety of serious diseases of the eye," Peter J. McDonnell, director of the Wilmer Eye Institute and professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said in a statement. "Additional research will allow us the opportunity to make significant advances in this area."
The collaboration aims to come up with treatments for back-of-the-eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema, geographic atrophy, Stargardt's disease and retinal vein occlusion