What is it about?
The protein quality control system is indispensable for health and diseases in various types of cells throughout the whole body. We have shown that small chemicals inhibit this system, leading to serious damage in a subset of retinal cells. We also find this damage is resistant to various types of therapeutic agents.
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Why is it important?
Our study provides a novel and convenient animal model using small chemicals. A simple injection of any of those chemicals to the eye causes consistent and persistent retinal damage, which is ideal to test therapeutic compounds and explore the mechanisms for retinal diseases. Given the refractory nature of this damage to various therapeutic compounds, further studies using this animal model will lead to discovery of novel approaches to treat complex retinal diseases.
Perspectives
I believe that this model is very useful, because retinal damage is reproducible, and a procedure is so simple and easy. I hope anyone else will use it for their research and drug discovery to bring something beneficial to patients who are suffering from challenging retinal diseases and waiting for better therapy.
MASAAKI KAGEYAMA
Santen Seiyaku Kabushiki Kaisha
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Chemical proteasome inhibition as a novel animal model of inner retinal degeneration in rats, PLOS One, May 2019, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217945.
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