However, not all patients show full response to anti-VEGF therapy (Ashraf et al., 2016), and even some studies report that prolonged injections of anti-VEGF agents may aggravate retinal ischemia (Toy et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2017), attribute to the irreversible degradation of retinal neurons and retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) (Ashraf et al., 2016; Gemenetzi et al., 2017; Keir et al., 2017), and increase the incidence of retinal fibrosis and tractional retinal detachment (Hu et al., 2014). The gene discussed is VEGFA; the disease is retinal ischemia.