About the Authors

Yanling Ouyang

Contributed equally to this work with: Yanling Ouyang, Fuqiang Li

yanlingyouyang@gmail.com

Affiliation Charité, University Medicine Berlin, Department of Ophthalmology, Berlin, Germany

Fuqiang Li

Contributed equally to this work with: Yanling Ouyang, Fuqiang Li

Affiliation Eye Center affiliated with 2nd Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, China

Qing Shao

Affiliation Charité, University Medicine Berlin, Department of Ophthalmology, Berlin, Germany

Florian M. Heussen

Affiliation Charité, University Medicine Berlin, Department of Ophthalmology, Berlin, Germany

Pearse A. Keane

Affiliation NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Ophthalmology, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, London, United Kingdom

Nicole Stübiger

Affiliation Charité, University Medicine Berlin, Department of Ophthalmology, Berlin, Germany

Srinivas R. Sadda

Affiliation Doheny Eye Institute and Department of Ophthalmology, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Uwe Pleyer

Affiliation Charité, University Medicine Berlin, Department of Ophthalmology, Berlin, Germany

Competing Interests

Dr. Li received funding from the Youth Research Foundation of the national health and family planning commission of Jilin Province, China. Dr. Keane has received a proportion of his funding from the Department of Health’s NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Ophthalmology at Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. Drs. Keane and Heussen have received travel grants from the Allergan European Retina Panel. Dr. Pleyer received funding from the federal ministry of education and research of Germany (BMBF) through the Toxonet 02 research collaboration and has been the Principal Investigator/Consultant for Abbott, Alcon, Allergan, Amgen, Bausch and Lomb, Bayer/Schering, Centocor, Esba Tech, Novartis but no commercial interests or financial relationships to any agent/device/technique. Dr. Sadda receives research support and serves as a consultant to Carl Zeiss Meditec and Optos. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: YO FL FMH UP. Performed the experiments: YO FL FMH QS. Analyzed the data: YO FL FMH QS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SRS NS UP. Wrote the paper: YO FL PAK UP.