Artificial Intelligence (AI) Discovers Precise Treatments for Blinding Diseases

Therapies for blinding diseases can be advanced precisely using a retinal cell map as per a study at the NIH/ National Eye Institute (NEI), published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Age and disease can cause metabolic changes in RPE cells that can lead to photoreceptor degeneration and invite various blinding diseases like age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

‘New study discovers five subpopulations of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE �a layer of tissue that nourishes and supports the retina�s light-sensing photoreceptors) using artificial intelligence (AI), that may help modify the treatment preciseness of blinding eye diseases.’

The team used artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze images of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE -a layer of retinal tissue that nourishes and supports the retina's light-sensing cells, photoreceptors) at single-cell resolution to create a reference map that locates each subpopulation within the eye.

New Discovery on Eye Diseases

Distinct differences among the retinal cells (tissue comprising the retina - vital to human visual perception) have been now identified by the present study that sheds light on tissue targeted by age-related macular degeneration and other diseases.

"These results provide a first-of-its-kind framework for understanding different RPE cell subpopulations and their vulnerability to retinal diseases, and for developing targeted therapies to treat them," says Michael F. Chiang, MD, NEI, National Institutes of Health.

"The findings will help us develop more precise cell and gene therapies for specific degenerative eye diseases," says the study's lead investigator, Kapil Bharti, PhD, NEI.

The study states that AI may help detect RPE changes at an earlier stage before the development of any degenerative changes.

Source: Medindia