Animal models of amblyopia.

Unquestionably, the last six decades of research on various animal models have advanced our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the many complex characteristics of amblyopia as well as provided promising new avenues for treatment. While animal models in general have served an important purpose, there nonetheless remain questions regarding the efficacy of particular models considering the differences across animal species, especially when the goal is to provide the foundations for human interventions. Our discussion of these issues culminated in three recommendations for future research to provide cohesion across animals models as well as a fourth recommendation for acceptance of a protocol for the minimum number of steps necessary for the translation of results obtained on particular animal models to human clinical trials. The three recommendations for future research arose from discussions of various issues including the specific results obtained from the use of different animal models, the degree of similarity to the human visual system, the ability to generate animal models of the different types of human amblyopia as well as the difficulty of scaling developmental timelines between different species.