- The research of professor Yoo, Hyung-Gon’s team from
 Seoul National University was released in the recent copy of international ophthalmology journal

There is a research outcome saying that UDCA, the main ingredient of Ursa, which is a representative product of Daewoong pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.(CEO : Lee, Jong-Wook), is effective for curing macular degeneration that is one of the reasons causing blindness.

 This research result by professor Yoo, Hyung-Gon’s team(ophthalmology) from SNU College of Medicine  was released in ‘Journal of Ocular Pharmacology and Therapeutics’, an American international journal of ophthalmology, in June.

 With diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma, macular degeneration is one of the 3 reasons causing blindness in Korea. This disease occurs as the yellow spot in the middle of the rear retina gradually degenerates. The yellow spot, on which most of visual cells are concentrated and the image is focused, plays an important role in vision. The yellow spot is divided into a dry type and a wet type. Even though a dry type, which takes up 90% of patients, does not have a great impact on vision, a wet type, which takes up 10% of patients and caused by newly created blood vessels on the yellow spot, requires a special caution due to the high risk of blindness.

In this research, professor Yoo, Hyung-Gon’s team found out that UDCA/T-UDCA is effective for prohibiting new blood vessels from being created on the interior choroid through animal studies(T-UDCA is modified form of UDCA when some of it enter the human body and bind to taurine). Moreover, less increase of VEGF(vascular endothelial growth factor) concentration in retina was identified and this fact was judged to be related to the shrink of newly created blood vessel tissue size.  

Based on the result of this animal study, they mentioned that UDCA may be effective for curing the macular degeneration, it has advantage of oral administration, and it will bring positive effects in combination with existing injections.

 Moreover, they confirmed that T-UDCA has a tendency to reduce the damage of retina cells histomorphologically through experiments on animals with retinal ischemia. Putting results from both the existing overseas research and this new research together, the research team expects that UDCA and T-UDCA will be used for curing eye problems such as macular degeneration, retinopathy, and retinitis pigmentosa.