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Lipidmetabolism in retinal neovascular disease with emphasize on diabetic retinopathy and age related macular degeneration: role of polyunsuturated fatty acids (PUFA) as therapeutic intervention.

Applicant Dr. Raffael Liegl
Subject Area Ophthalmology
Term from 2014 to 2016
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 269524004
 
Final Report Year 2018

Final Report Abstract

The initial idea of the project was to explore the influence of metabolic dysregulation on the development of vasoproliferative retinal diseases with a specific focus on retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), age related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy. We were able to show that omega 3 and 6 substituion through modified food intake was able to change the outcome in a model of AMD that is mainly triggered through inflammation. However through the course of my time in Boston we slowly progressed to see that humoral components such as platelets would play a major role in neovascularization. This is particularly interesting because the role of platelets in angiogenesis in general has already been studied to some extent but no research has been done in retinal diseases. If our hypothesis and the results that we have observed in our preclinical model are also seen in human beings, this could have a huge impact on the way premature infants are treated in our neonatal intensive care units. However, there have also been a number of projects that I have not been able to get any interesting results from. Acetylcholine receptors for example have been a target of several drugs and it has also been postulated that these drugs might have an influence on neovascularization. In our model however I did not observe any effect. Furthermore did we tried to treat mice with different noble gases (eg xenon) but could not go ahead with this project even though the idea would have been striking to treat premature babies with xenon to protect from developing ROP. This project however was not manageable due to the problem of xenon to be scarcely available.

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