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VI. International Symposium on AMD – Age-Related Macular Degeneration – Emerging Concepts – Exploring known and Identifying new Pathways

11. - 12.09.2015, Baden-Baden

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Mitochondria as a therapeutic target for treating AMD

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  • Deborah Ferrington - Minneapolis

VI. International Symposium on AMD – Age-Related Macular Degeneration – Emerging Concepts – Exploring known and Identifying new Pathways. Baden-Baden, 11.-12.09.2015. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2015. Doc15amd35

doi: 10.3205/15amd35, urn:nbn:de:0183-15amd352

Published: October 1, 2015

© 2015 Ferrington.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. See license information at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Outline

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AMD is a challenging disease to study due to the unique characteristics of the human eye, including the presence of a macula found only in primates, as well as the lengthy timeframe of >60 years to develop. Importantly, no animal model can faithfully recapitulate these features, further limiting our capacity to study disease mechanism. Our strategy has been to analyze human donor eyes graded for their stage of AMD, which has allowed us to capture key features of the disease. Results from our proteomic analysisand measures of mtDNAdamage has provided solid evidence that the mitochondria is an early site of defect in the retinal pigment epithelium and thus, is a potential target for intervention.