Recent human data have implicated inflammatory processes in AMD and DR, with high intraocular levels of VEGF family ligands (e.g. VEGF-A and PlGF) and pro-inflammatory cytokines (e.g. TNF-α and CCL2) reported (Ten Berge et al., 2019; Tsai et al., 2018), although the impact of immunomodulation at the cellular level remains unclear. Here, CCL2 is linked to age-related macular degeneration.