gms | German Medical Science

This talk highlights the role of key immune pathways in the pathophysiology of major retinal degenerative diseases including age-related macular degeneration. We will first discuss the mechanisms how loss of retinal homeostasis evokes an unbalanced immune reaction involving responses of local microglia and recruited macrophages. Presenting these innate immune cells as targets, we specifically emphasize the concept of immunomodulation as potential treatment strategy to prevent or delay vision loss. Promising molecules are ligands for phagocyte receptors, intracellular regulators involved in the activation of microglia and more general modifiers of their inflammatory response and migration. We briefly summarize the scientific evidence for this strategy from preclinical animal models, human ocular tissue analyses, and clinical trials evolving in the last few years.