Animal models of age-related macular degeneration

Animal models are crucial to study causative mechanisms and evaluate novel treatment strategies for blinding diseases like age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This brief review summarises commonly reported rodent and primate models of AMD. The different models require genetic/transgenic manipulation and differ in their ability to recapitulate human AMD features, with impact on costs and predictability for researchers. Laser-induced wet AMD models have crucially helped study novel treatments that are now being used in humans. Exciting developments in this area of AMD are ongoing to answer unresolved AMD disease mechanism questions and improved testing of new therapies.