CNTF and retinal degeneration: Its major achievements includes elucidation of the pathogenic role that serine and 1-deoxysphingolipid metabolism abnormalities play in this condition; the use of objective measures of retinal structures such as the area of ellipsoid zone disruption as an outcome measure in a clinical trial [56, 60]; the demonstration that CNTF slows down retinal degeneration [56]; and the development of a new classification system based on multimodal imaging [9].