Dry eyedisease compounds…
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A critical point to highlight is that all of the above-‐mentioned potential newdrugs
are centering their actionmainly towards symptoms, controlling inflammation or
restoring thenormal amount of tears but none of themis addressing the causative
mechanismsof thedisease leaving its causeunattended. Developinganewdrug for
the treatment of DED has become a key target for the pharmaceutical industry.
Even thoughdry eye is themostwidespread eye disorder, there is limited offer of
effective therapeutic agents. Dry eye disease is not a life-‐threatening disorder and
its symptoms are not severe, but the overarching complexity of the syndrome
makes it challenging tomanage. Many of the candidate dry eye agents are failing
FDA testing, even though some of themare approved in Asia and Europe, mainly
because of the tight clinical trials regulations in the USA. Other reasons for this
frequent failureare thenatureof the syndromeand the lackof anobjective test for
the diagnosis of the severity of the disease, because usually symptoms evaluation
is insufficient as a measurement factor. There are several proposals for new,
objective tests such as molecular markers (94, 95) and tear filmosmolarity tests
(96, 97) but at the moment none of them has advanced beyond the pre-‐clinical
evaluation. Dozens of companies have placed under development a vast variety of
new drug candidates in their pharmaceutical pipelines and most of these drugs
have already approved as treatment for other diseases as identical biological
pathways canbeactive indifferentways invariousdiseases. Discoveringnewuses
for old drugs can ensure important financial benefits, for patients as well as for
biotechnologycompanies, loweringcostsandshortening theapproval timelines.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Wewould like to thank the SpanishMinistry of Economy and Competition
(Project SAF2010-‐16024) and theMinistry of Health Social Services and Equality
(Project RETICS RD12/0034/0003) for their funding contribution to this
publication.
