New concepts about the role of Muller cells in retinal regeneration

POLITI LUIS ENRIQUE; VOLONTÉ YANEL ANDREA; SIMON MARIA VICTORIA; ROTSTEIN NORA PATRICIA

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; the XXXVII Brazilian CONGRESS. XXX Pan-American Congress of Ophthalmology; 2013

A common feature of neurodegenerative diseases of the retina like Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) , is photoreceptor cell death by apoptosis . A new strategy to find a suitable treatment to regenerate the structure and functionality of the retina is the use of stem cells. Works from many laboratories, including our, would indicate that Muller cells are stem cells capable of regenerating retina photoreceptors. So far, the most suitable animal model to investigate RP is the retinal degeneration (rd) mouse. By using neuro-glia mixed cultures, in this work, we compared Muller cells obtained from newborn wild type or rd mice We here present evidences that Müller cells from the rd , but not from the wt mice, are ineffective in promoting cell cycle progression in photoreceptor progenitors. We are now investigating whether this apparent failure in the rd Muller cells to promote photoreceptor recovery is due to a defect in either Muller cells or photoreceptors.