Timothy Corson
Merrill Grayson Senior Professor
Ophthalmology
ude[dot]ui[at]nosroct
Novel therapies for neovascular eye diseases
Dr. Corson’s laboratory is focused on identifying new targets and potential therapies for neovascular eye diseases. These diseases include common, blinding diseases characterized by abnormal blood vessel growth, such as neovascular (wet) age-related macular degeneration, proliferative diabetic retinopathy, retinopathy of prematurity, and others. Working with chemist collaborators, Dr. Corson’s group has identified the enzymes ferrochelatase and soluble epoxide hydrolase as mediators of angiogenesis (blood vessel growth), and developed new small molecules targeting each of these enzymes that could be leads for new therapies. The patents resulting from these discoveries have attracted industry support for commercialization toward clinical testing. Dr. Corson is also studying the redox regulatory transcription factor, Ref-1, in collaboration with Dr. Mark Kelley at IU. Ref-1 is also important for angiogenesis in the eye, and a compound targeting this activity has entered clinical trials for diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema. Dr. Corson’s research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, multiple foundations, and the pharmaceutical industry. He was named a 2016 Watanabe Translational Scholar by the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute and was a 2018 Entrepreneur in Residence at the Indiana Center for Biomedical Innovation.