01/12/2026
Maximillian McCann, a postdoctoral researcher in our University of Illinois College of Medicine, studies an advanced complication of diabetes that disrupts vision and can lead to blindness.
The condition, proliferative diabetic retinopathy, happens when high blood sugar damages blood vessels and cuts off blood flow to the retina, where rods and cones translate light into images we see. The eye is starved for a new energy source, so it grows new blood vessels, which spiderweb into the eyeball’s jellylike interior. But these new vessels are weak and prone to leakage that can impair vision.
Working with doctors, residents, and nurses at UI Health, McCann and his team analyzed blood vessels removed from consenting patients, and extracted the endothelial cells which wallpaper the vessels’ interior. Much to the researchers’ surprise, a few patients’ samples included no endothelial cells at all. Instead, immune cells were the dominant cell type in the surgical specimens.
“That was the big surprise,” McCann said. “Previously, it wasn’t thought that the human eye has any sort of defense against pathological blood vessels. Nobody had observed these results in patients before.”
Ultimately, researchers hope their discovery will inform better treatments for proliferative diabetic retinopathy.
Learn more: https://bit.ly/4beQcxB
