How Genetic and Environmental AMD Risk Factors Shape Pathogenic Inflammation

Florian Sennlaub, MD, PhD 

Institut de la Vision 

Florian Sennlaub’s laboratory, at the Institut de la Vision (Paris), focuses on the pathogenic role of the chronic accumulation of mononuclear phagocytes (MP) in age-related macular degeneration (AMD). He demonstrated that MPs accumulate around large drusen, choroidal neovascularization, and in and around atrophic zones. In a series of articles his team showed how chronic MP infiltration of the photoreceptor cell layer interferes with RPE cell function and promotes neovascularization and photoreceptor degeneration. His recent work has demonstrated how environmental and genetic AMD-risk variants affect MP function, impair subretinal immune suppression, and inflammation resolution. Together his findings emphasize the role of the AMD-risk variants in inflammation and inflammation in AMD and open new therapeutic avenues to inhibit pathogenic non-resolving subretinal MP accumulation in AMD.