Importantly, Asians appear to have a distinct clinical presentation of the disease (for example, absence of drusen and minimal fibrous scarring in polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy, a variant of AMD accounting for 20–55% of Asian patients with exudative AMD) and different responses to treatment (for example, poorer response to inhibitors of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) compared with patients of European ancestry)12, 13. The gene discussed is VEGFA; the disease is age-related macular degeneration.