Glaucoma Biomarkers

Glaucoma is a major cause of blindness. The inability to predict a patient's IOP response to medications is a critical barrier for the clinician to consistently provide highly effective IOP-based treatments. Current trial-and error approaches to glaucoma management are inefficient and have not addressed this barrier as there are no predictive factors for drug response. Our long-term goal is to improve outcomes by identifying biomarkers and environmental factors that profile a patient at risk for glaucoma by age-of-onset, rate of disease progression, "poor response" to treatment, and large IOP fluctuation. Our purpose of this research project is to address this critical barrier by focusing on physiological factors that predict IOP response to drugs.