Killifish: A Novel Model of AMD

This project aims to determine the biological processes underlying aging retinal disease and identify therapeutic targets by utilizing killifish, a naturally occurring model of AMD.

Killifish retinas will be characterized for AMD-like pathologies throughout their lifespan, including the rate of vision loss, deposit accumulation, immune cell activation and translocation, and photoreceptor cell death mechanism. Age-related disease will be exacerbated or alleviated by transgene introduction, genome editing, and/or pharmaceutical treatment.

There are few accurate models of AMD currently, which makes studying mechanisms underlying AMD pathology and identifying therapeutics exceedingly difficult. The killifish is an emerging model of accelerated ageing that naturally undergoes age-associated retinal degeneration, and therefore provides the unique opportunity to study how retinal diseases of ageing develop and can be prevented.

Age-related macular degeneration is a leading cause of vision loss in our ageing population. There are currently no effective treatments for dry/atrophic AMD, the most common type of AMD, due to a poor understanding of the cellular causes and pathophysiology. This work will determine the biological processes underlying age-related photoreceptor degeneration and identify therapeutics through the killifish model.