Pre-clinical evaluation of drug treatments to prevent vision loss from Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration using patient-derived iPSC-RPE

Dry Age related macular degeneration is a chronic disease of aging that causes progressive loss
of vision due to damage to the RPE cell layer in the retina. There are no current treatments for dry AMD. Studies
have indicated that personalized approaches are likely required to match patients with Dry AMD with drug
therapies to treat their disease. Our group generates RPE from induced pluripotent stem cells derived from tissue
biopsies from AMD patients to test drugs in the laboratory that may prevent loss of RPE and preserve vision. This
translational grant builds on previous drug testing results to test the therapeutic potential of the optimal drugs
identified for individual patients to preserve their RPE by testing cell survival in drug treated cells under stress and
identifying drug dose responses using the patient's iPSC-RPE lines.