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Description

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a chronic disease which causes central blindness in the eye. This progressive disease is thought to affect 1 of every 4 people over the age of 80 living in developed countries, including America. There is no cure and the only treatments to halt disease progression involve biweekly eye injections for the rest of the patient’s life. Clearly there is a great need to understand AMD and find better treatment for the many afflicted. It is known that harmful capillary growth (angiogenesis) contributes to AMD. By learning more about retinal angiogenesis, we can understand AMD in greater detail and search for better treatments. This mathematical model uses weighted probabilistic theory to simulate capillary tip cell (EC) response to AMD retinal conditions. In this model, EC escape a parent blood vessel, travel through an extracellular matrix (fibronectin), sense angiogenic factors (VEGF) and anti-factors (PEDF), and emit enzymes to dissolve fibronectin (protease). EC proliferation, death, and movement are all based on equation-based weighted probabilities, and a random number chosen ensures that this model retains the random nature found in biological models. This model has great value to help researchers study a complicated disease. Benefits include being able to simulate disease progression over dozens of years in a matter of hours, methods which can be quick and simple to update as we learn more about the proteins involved, and thousands of simulations can be ran at little cost. In the future, this model will be utilized to test possible treatments to see their effectiveness. This will help find the most effective treatments and speed their pathway to lab experiments to find a more suitable treatment.

Publication Date

12-9-2021

City

Logan, UT

Keywords

macular degeneration, blindness, treatment, disease modeling

Disciplines

Engineering

A Computational Model of Angiogenesis in Wet Age-Related Macular Degeneration

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Engineering Commons

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