Episode 86: The Dark Side of the Moon: Prof Frank Holz on Dry AMD and a Career in Retina

Okay.

Well, thank you very much, Jonathan.

And well, today I have the great pleasure of speaking with Professor Frank Holtz.

He's past president of Uretina, as you already mentioned, and the leading figure in retinal research and particularly in age-related macular degeneration.

Frank, you are a professor and chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Bonn.

And you have this position since 2003.

And you were trained in Heidelberg.

And early in your career, you spent time at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, working with Professor Ellen Bird.

And I guess that's an experience that helped you shape your subsequent scientific interests in macular disease.

So over the past decades, you and your group have made major contributions to our understanding of geographic atrophy and dry AMD from fundus autofluorescence, retinal imaging, to disease phenotyping, biomarkers, and to national history studies, and also to the development of new therapeutic approaches.

So this year, you have been invited to give the prestigious Euretina Lecture in Vienna.

And the title is intriguing and also very fitting, The Dark Side of the Moon, New Horizons in Dry AMD.

So Frank, thank you so much for joining me.

And I'm especially proud because you were my former teacher.

So let's start with geographic atrophy and dry AMD.

You have been studying this for more than three decades.

Now, if you compare what you thought the disease was when you started with how you see it today, what has changed most fundamentally?