Regenerative medicine for retinal diseases: activating endogenous repair mechanisms.

The retina is subject to degenerative diseases that often lead to significant visual impairment. Non-mammalian vertebrates have a remarkable ability to replace neurons lost through damage. Fish, and to a limited extent birds, replace lost neurons by de-differentiation of Müller glia to a progenitor state followed by replication of these neuronal progenitor cells. Over the past five years, studies have investigated whether regeneration can be stimulated in the mouse and rat retina. Several groups have reported that at least some types of neurons can be regenerated in the mammalian retina in vivo or in vitro, and that the regeneration of neurons can be stimulated using growth factors, transcription factors or subtoxic levels of excitatory amino acids. These recent results suggest that some part of the regenerative program that occurs in non-mammalian vertebrates remains in the mammalian retina, and may provide a basis to develop new strategies for retinal repair in patients with retinal degenerations.

视网膜易患退行性疾病，这些疾病常常导致严重的视力损伤。非哺乳类脊椎动物具有很强的能力来替换因损伤而丢失的神经元。鱼类以及在一定程度上鸟类通过米勒胶质细胞去分化到祖细胞状态，然后这些神经祖细胞进行复制来替换丢失的神经元。在过去的五年中，研究已经探究了在小鼠和大鼠的视网膜中是否可以刺激再生。几个研究小组报告称，至少某些类型的神经元可以在哺乳动物视网膜体内或体外再生，并且可以利用生长因子、转录因子或亚毒性水平的兴奋性氨基酸来刺激神经元的再生。这些近期的研究结果表明，在非哺乳类脊椎动物中发生的再生程序的某些部分在哺乳动物视网膜中仍然存在，并且可能为开发针对视网膜退行性变患者的视网膜修复新策略提供基础。