Keeping an eye on 40 years of innovation in treatment of macular degeneration

Each year, Healthnetwork Foundation honors a select group of our partner physicians with Service Excellence Awards to thank them for their superb service and recognize them for their groundbreaking contributions to medicine. Dr. Susan Bressler is a board-certified ophthalmologist, the Julia G. Levy, Ph.D., Professor of Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute, and one of Healthnetwork Foundation’s Service Excellence Awardees for 2021.

In 1981 Susan Bressler had a year left of medical school and needed to choose her specialty area. Ophthalmology, it seemed, was brimming with potential. At the time there was no treatment for the number-one cause of blindness in adults age 50 and older throughout the developed world: age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

“This disease was wide open for treatment, which would have a huge impact in the quality of life for millions around the world,” she says. “That was very inviting.”

She chose well. In the four decades since then, Dr. Bressler has been privileged to be part of one innovation after another in the care of common retinal diseases. First came laser therapy for wet macular degeneration and related disorders, which wasn’t perfect but “was rewarding because we went from nothing to at least having something.” Next came photodynamic therapy, which Dr. Bressler was directly involved in developing. Then, in the early 2000s, came drugs that are injected into people’s eyes with remarkable outcomes.

Dr. Bressler served on the data and safety monitoring committee for the first FDA-approved biologic drug, and this class of agents is still the mainstay for treatment today. “We can stop vision loss in 90 percent of people and recover lost vision in 30-40 percent of people suffering from wet (neovascular) AMD,” she says.

The innovation isn’t over. Dr. Bressler says drugs are on the horizon that will last longer in the eye so that instead of going into an office for monthly injections, patients will only have to go two to four times a year.

Now, Dr. Bressler’s attention is shifting to the future of eye care by continuing to help train future generations of ophthalmologists. Most studies in ophthalmology are sponsored by private companies with interests in developing medications and devices. But when it comes to the people side of things, philanthropy saves the day.

“People who are early in their careers can benefit from mentoring by more senior folks like me who have been part of the prior revolutions in care,” she says. “Philanthropy sponsors new doctors, many who come from overseas, so they can take 6-to-24-month fellowships and learn how to run clinical trials.”

One of the fellows Dr. Bressler is currently supervising is helping with the development of an app that is intended to reduce the burden on patients from going physically to a doctor’s office by enabling them to collect vision information in the comfort of their home. The app is being developed by one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical corporations. The research fellow is involved in identifying suitable candidates for the study, helping coordinate all aspects of the study, and assisting in data analysis and reporting.

“It’s been a very exciting discipline, with a ton of innovation and enormous impact on patients throughout the developed world,” she says. “That innovation is going to continue, because fortunately the private world has realized it can be very profitable to have treatments to improve or save vision. For new doctors entering this field, it will still be dynamic for a long time. My focus now is to ensure this legacy and help train others to carry the torch. And philanthropy is critical for that.”

KAREN MARTIN is a writer for Healthnetwork.


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