Expert Panel in Macular Degeneration Recommends Paradigm Shift for Future Research
News in ophthalmology : Expert Panel in Macular Degeneration Recommends Paradigm Shift for Future Research
A panel of experts assembled by the National Advisory Eye Council (NAEC) is calling for large-scale collaborative research to address dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
The NAEC -- a 12-member panel that helps guide the National Eye Institute -- recognised the need to investigate the current state of research on this disease in order to guide future research.
The article, published in Nature Communications, is the product of a group of researchers tasked by the NAEC to do just that, as well as propose ideas on how to expand knowledge of this disease.
While there are treatments for wet AMD that help limit the inappropriate growth of new blood vessels that disrupt vision, there is currently no effective treatment for dry AMD.
“There are a plethora of genetic and environmental factors interweaving and contributing to this disease in ways known and unknown,” explained Lindsay Farrer, PhD, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts. “Our article reflects on what we know thus far and calls for interdisciplinary research, with ideas on where to go next, towards answers that will bring about meaningful clinical results.”
Among the ideas proposed in the article are drawing forth “integrated collaboration of leading clinicians, imaging experts, a wide variety of basic scientists, bioinformaticians and biostaticians” as well as creating a large biorepository of eye tissue from donors with and without AMD, generating multiple types of omics data from donor eye tissue, and designing computer models of the disease.
“Future directions in dry AMD research should emphasise systems biology approaches that integrate omic, pharmacological, and clinical data into mathematical models that can predict disease onset and progression, identify biomarkers, establish disease causing mechanisms, and monitor response to therapy,” the researchers concluded.
Reference: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11262-1