Mathematical Biology Seminar Moussa Zouache, University of Utah, Tuesday, March 18, 2025 2:00pm in LCB 215 The Quest for Causality in Age-related Macular Degeneration Abstract: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a primary cause of irreversible vision loss worldwide. It causes years of progressive vision loss and decreased quality of life that may culminate in severe visual impairments and blindness among those affected. The pathophysiology of the disease, its clinical presentation and its course of progression have been studied extensively. The unprecedented amount of experimental and clinical data generated to date have however failed to produce a level of understanding of the chain of events driving AMD onset and/or progression sufficient for translation into effective therapeutic strategies. This talk will explore the differential contribution of each component of the outer-blood retinal barrier, the primary location of AMD-associated pathology, to disease onset and progression, and illustrate how methodologies integrating large-scale analyses, mathematical models and refinement approaches are necessary to identify causal drivers of disease. Recent work that illustrates how these methodologies can help identify gaps in knowledge and lay down future strategies to significantly improve our understanding of the mechanisms driving this blinding disease will be presented.