Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cells in Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Dear Colleagues,

The biology of atrophic (dry) age-related macular degeneration (aAMD) and its progression to geographic atrophy (GA) is multifactorial and complex. In aAMD, the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) begins to degenerate, causing irreversible vision loss. It is challenging to develop in vitro and in vivo disease models recapitulating critical features of AMD pathobiology. There are no current effective treatments for RPE cell loss in aAMD. Intriguing approaches to treating atrophic AMD include 1) understanding the mechanisms contributing to RPE degeneration in atrophic AMD, 2) developing therapies focused on stimulating RPE development and regeneration, and 3) patient iPSC-based RPE disease modeling for studying disease mechanisms and drug screening.

This Special Issue will examine novel regulators stimulating an intrinsic regenerative response in the mature RPE, methods to isolate and maintain RPE cells isolated from rodents and human donor eyes, age-related changes in RPE mitochondrial function, metabolic pathways, and extracellular matrix reorganization, transcriptomic and proteomic analyses of iPSC-derived RPE, and novel animal models recapitulating hallmarks of aAMD pathobiology.

Dr. Sujoy Bhattacharya
Guest Editor

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• atrophic age-related macular degeneration
• iPSC-derived RPE
• animal models