This article is written by switchBoard ESRs
Prerna Srivastava, Meng-Jung Lee and David Klindt.
The European Retina
Meeting (ERM) 2017 was held from 5th to 7th October in
Paris. The ERM is a biennial conference series, which was started 10 years ago.
It aims at bringing together people working on different fields of vision to
exchange their ideas and share their innovations in the field. This platform
gave ESRs a huge opportunity to present their first exciting results in front
of the best scientists in the field, which not only helped them in getting
valuable inputs for their project but also opened doors for collaborations.
The first day of the
meeting was opened with a brief retinal anatomy session, chaired by John Dowling, focussing on the “Human and Primate Retina”. It was
followed by session on “Retinal diseases and Therapies”, illuminating progress in
developing new therapeutic approaches towards retinal diseases. Many different aspects of retinal disease treatment were presented.
For instance, transplantation of photoreceptors derived from induced
pluripotent or embryonic stem cell was found to be beneficial in treating
photoreceptor degenerated diseases. Although it remained unclear if the
transplanted photoreceptors integrate into the retina permanently, it showed
great potential as a promising therapeutic method. In addition, new optogenetic
tools were presented towards the recovery from vision loss by expressing
light-sensitive channels in retinal neurons, and the studies are now moving
from rodents to primates. Alternatively, organic retinal prostheses offer a
complete different aspect to treating retinal diseases. By implanting the
electronic device, playing the role of photoreceptors, it stimulates the
remaining retinal neurons and could partially restore vision. Resolution is now
the main issue to be solved. Finally, axon regeneration, a very important topic
to restore vision for glaucoma patients, demonstrates now very promising
results for axon elongation and the future direction will be focusing on guiding
elongated axons to the right targets.
On the next day, the meeting continued with a session on the
“Retinal Impact on Eye Development and Myopia”, followed by session on “Retinal
Circuits” where many interesting findings were covered. The discussed topics
include how the ribbon synapse are modulated in the absence of horizontal cells
and their role in encoding the visual information; functional diversity of the
bipolar cells and how the colour vision from regions where S and M cones have
different spatial distribution is encoded in the mouse inner retina; dynamics
of the circuits for directional selective retinal ganglion cells showed that
the directional preference can be tuned
by repetitive stimulation by strengthening the null direction response. There
were also talks linking the retinal circuits to what the animals may see in their
natural environment, for instance, in zebrafish, photoreceptors sensitive to
different wavelengths distribute differently in the eye corresponding to positions
in visual space. These fascinating results advanced our understanding in the
field.
The last day of the
meeting started with a session on “Tools against retinal diseases” that
introduced the audience to new techniques in the field. Amazing images from different mouse retinal cell types –specifically
labelled by adeno-associated viral vectors – were
presented by Botond Roska, who is now developing similar viral vectors for the primate
retina.
The meeting then closed with a session on “Light Adaptation”, showing findings that overthrew the conventional point of view for visual
studies. That is to say, rods can be activated with photopic illuminance and
the longer they are stimulated, the more they influence visual perception.
Each day, the lecture sessions
were mixed with poster sessions, where 8 of the switchBoard ESRs presented
their results, namely:
· DavidKlindt on using large population recordings to discover the computations of
individual neurons and group them into functional types. (ESR 1)
· PrernaSrivastava on spontaneous oscillatory networks in the degenerated retina. (ESR
2).
· MaximeZimmermann on Zebrafish colour vision: anisotropic retinal circuits match
asymmetric spectral content in the natural light. (ESR 3).
· SubhashChandra Yadav on comparing AII and A8 amacrine cells in the mouse retina. (ESR
4).
· BenjaminJames on how does multivesicular release contribute to the transmission of the
visual signal. (ESR 6).
· LuciaZanetti on light induced ganglion cell responses in Cav1.4 mutant mouse
retinas. (ESR 9).
· Meng-JungLee on electrically imaging retinal neurons using high-density multi-electrode arrays.
(ESR 11). – see picture.
· IremKilicarslan on rewiring of bipolar cells in congenital stationary blindness
type 2 mouse models. (ESR 14).
Besides these
interesting lecture and poster sessions, on the first day of the meeting
everyone was also invited by the Mayor of Paris to a gala buffet hosted in the
Hôtel de Ville to promote scientific research in the city. The venue was rather
impressive and many retinal researchers gathered to enjoy this delightful
evening.
Finally, to motivate
young researchers to present their work, prizes were awarded to the best poster
and a short talk. Mrs. Joana Neves got the prize for the best oral presentation
on the title “MANF as an immune modulatory intervention to improve retinal
regenerative therapies in aging” and Mrs. Rebekah Warwick for the best poster
presentation on the title “Response properties of retinal ganglion cells and
their underlying circuits vary with retina location”. The awardees won the
registration fee and flight tickets for the upcoming ARVO 2018 meeting in
Hawaii.
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