What is it about?
Abnormal blood vessel formation in the eyes contributes to blindness in all ages. New fragile vessels leak, block the light pathway, and provide insufficient nutrition and oxygen to the light-sensing neurons. Better treatment is needed.
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Photo by Alan Villegas on Unsplash
Why is it important?
We found that the immune cell, especially a recently unearthed inflammatory signaling pathway, plays a key role in regulating the new vessel growth in ocular diseases. cGAS-STING signaling is an old pathway in innate immunity. Our study found that overactivated cGAS-STING signaling is associated with abnormal vessel growth. Suppression of cGAS-STING signaling rescued the vascular pathologies, including abnormal growth, leakage, and inflammation.
Perspectives
Our work attempts to temper the overactive immune cells and ease the abnormal new vessel growth. We believe that fine-tuning immune response provides a promising strategy to cure vascular diseases and recover patients' eyesight.
Xiang (Eric) Ma
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Modulation of cGAS-STING signaling by PPARα in a mouse model of ischemia-induced retinopathy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2208934119.
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