Since both caspase-9 inhibition (Avrutsky et al., 2020) and VEGF neutralization (Fuma et al., 2017; Nishinaka et al., 2018) have been associated with improvements in retinal blood flow, we examined the development of retinal ischemia following induction of retinal vein occlusion. The gene discussed is CASP9; the disease is retinal vein occlusion.