Repair and pain
Is there anything measured for eyes?
A small but real corner of this catalogue, and the place where thymosin beta-4's actual human trials live, which is not where people think they live.
1,643
people in trials
9
human studies
3
compounds, animal or cell only
0
trials found nothing
Measured in people
Ranked by how many people, which is a fact about the evidence and not a judgement about the compound. The one at the top is the most studied, which is not the same as the best. Counts are never added across compounds, because the same person can appear in more than one trial.
- 1,258 people1 human study
1258 patients aged 60 and over. At 12 months OAKS met its primary endpoint, with lesion growth slowed 21 percent monthly (P equal to 0.0004) and 16 percent every other month (P equal to 0.0055), while DERBY missed it, at 12 percent (P equal to 0.062) and 11 percent (P equal to 0.085). By 24 months both were significant, 22 and 18 percent in OAKS and 19 and 16 percent in DERBY. The paper states there were no differences in key secondary visual function endpoints at 24 months. New-onset exudative age-related macular degeneration at 24 months: 11 and 8 percent on pegcetacoplan versus 2 percent on sham in OAKS, and 13 and 6 percent versus 4 percent in DERBY. Funded by Apellis Pharmaceuticals.
The Lancet, 2023 · 1,258 people
- 218 people2 human studies
218 participants with DME across nine arms. Posted results (December 2018): mean change in best corrected visual acuity at week 24 of +5.2 letters (1.0 mg), +2.7 (2.0 mg) and -1.5 (3.0 mg) with risuteganib, versus +7.0 with bevacizumab. No statistical comparison posted and no journal publication located. Sponsor funded.
ClinicalTrials.gov, Allegro Ophthalmics, 2014 · 218 people
Post hoc analysis of the 39 completers of the phase 2a. Eyes with more intact ellipsoid zone, thicker outer retina and less geographic atrophy at baseline were more likely to gain 8 letters. Exploratory, and proposed by the authors as a way to enrich future trials. NIH supported analysis.
Ophthalmology Retina, 2022 · no headcount in the line
- 85 people1 human study
RHODOS. 85 patients with m.3460G>A, m.11778G>A or m.14484T>C mutations, idebenone 900 mg a day for 24 weeks, multicentre, double blind, placebo controlled. The primary endpoint, best recovery in visual acuity, did not reach statistical significance in the intention to treat population. A post hoc interaction analysis found significant secondary endpoint differences in patients with discordant visual acuities at baseline. Idebenone was safe and well tolerated.
Brain, 2011 · 85 people
- 64 people2 human studies
Phase 2b in 64 patients: 4 mg/day cibinetide significantly increased corneal nerve fiber area versus placebo; pain improved in all groups, so the pain effect was not clearly separated from placebo.
Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, 2017 · 64 people
28 days of daily subcutaneous ARA 290 improved neuropathic symptoms and increased corneal small nerve fiber density in a blinded placebo-controlled trial.
Molecular Medicine, 2013 · no headcount in the line
- 9 people1 human study
Small placebo-controlled Phase 2 (9 patients): RGN-259 eye drops cut ocular discomfort 35% and corneal staining 59% versus vehicle at day 56.
Cornea, 2015 · 9 people
- 9 people1 human study
A 9 patient multicentre randomised double-masked placebo-controlled phase 2 trial of thymosin beta 4 eye drops in severe dry eye. At day 56 the treated group showed a 35.1% reduction in ocular discomfort and a 59.1% reduction in total corneal fluorescein staining against vehicle. This is the parent protein, as an eye drop, in nine people. It is included because it is the human evidence usually implied for the TB-500 in this vial, and it is not about that molecule or that route.
Cornea, 2015 · 9 people
- no headcount stated1 human study
What the parent peptide's evidence actually looks like: a 601-patient Phase 3 of thymosin beta-4 eye drops whose posted results show no separation from placebo on either co-primary endpoint at day 29.
ClinicalTrials.gov, ReGenTree LLC, 2018 · no headcount in the line
Measured in animals or cells, not yet in people
These are separated from the trials above rather than ranked against them, because they answer a different question. A result in a rat is a real result and a reason somebody ran the study; it is not a measurement of what happens in you. Where the human work is missing, the reason is usually money rather than failure, and that is set out at the bottom of this page.
- 1 preclinical study
Measured in animals or cells
Mouse. Ectopic expression of Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4 in mouse retinal ganglion cells restored youthful DNA methylation patterns and transcriptomes, promoted axon regeneration after optic nerve injury, and reversed vision loss in a mouse glaucoma model and in aged mice. The benefit required the DNA demethylases TET1 and TET2. NIH funded, with non-US government and non-PHS support.
Nature, 2020 · animal
- 1 preclinical study
Measured in animals or cells
Naturally aged mice. Long-term procyanidin C1 treatment reduced retinal senescent cell burden and ameliorated age-related structural and functional decline in the retina, characterised by single-cell RNA sequencing. Mouse, no lifespan endpoint.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024 · animal
- 1 preclinical study
Measured in animals or cells
Retinal pigment epithelium cell work relevant to age-related macular degeneration, reporting protective effects against oxidant injury. Cell culture. The eye claim that circulates for this peptide traces to work at this level, not to any patient.
Scientific Reports, 2018 · in vitro
Why the trial record looks like this
A missing trial is usually a missing sponsor. Nobody runs a nine-figure programme on a molecule they cannot own, so the compounds with the thinnest human records are often the oldest and most freely available ones rather than the weakest. Taking OSK Partial Reprogramming as the example, because it states the problem most clearly:
Partial reprogramming is the most heavily funded area in longevity biotechnology and the one with the least human data. Altos Labs launched in 2022 with about three billion dollars and has no registered human trial. YouthBio Therapeutics, Turn Biotechnologies and Retro Biosciences likewise return no genuine reprogramming trial on ClinicalTrials.gov. The single registered study in the world is Life Biosciences' ER-100, which this site also covers under its own entry. The gap between the money and the registry is the most informative fact on this page.
The reason for the gap is the safety problem, and it is not speculative. Two high-profile mouse papers, in Nature in 2013 and Cell in 2014, showed that transient induction of reprogramming factors in living animals produces teratomas across multiple organs and, when reprogramming is started and then stopped, tumours resembling paediatric Wilms tumour. The therapeutic window sits between not enough expression to rejuvenate and enough to dedifferentiate into cancer, it is defined by duration and dose, and it has only been characterised in mice. Dropping c-Myc to give OSK, and injecting into one eye with an oral switch that can be turned off, are both engineering responses to that problem. Neither has been shown to solve it in a person.
One further distinction is worth holding on to, because popular coverage collapses it constantly. The 2016 result that partial reprogramming extends lifespan is in a progeroid mouse, an animal engineered to age prematurely from a specific lesion. Reversing that lesion extends that animal's life without demonstrating anything about normal ageing. The one report of lifespan extension in normal mice is a 2024 paper in 124-week-old males from a single group, measuring remaining rather than total lifespan, and it has not been replicated.
A compound appears here only when a citation on its own page states this outcome and reports a result for it; naming it is not enough. Human, animal and cell work are counted separately and never merged. Participant counts are read from the study lines and deliberately undercount. Nothing here is advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to take or to avoid anything.