Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 114, Issue 20, Pages 5259-5264Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1615394114
Keywords
neurodegeneration; retinitis pigmentosa; photoreceptor cell death; non-cell autonomous degeneration; gene therapy
Categories
Funding
- German Research Council (DFG) [SFB870]
- Tistou and Charlotte Kerstan Foundation
- NIH [R01EY018213, R01EY024698, R01EY026682, R21AG050437, 5P30EY019007, 5P30CA013696]
- Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB)
- Schneeweiss Stem Cell Fund
- New York State [N09G-302, N13G-275]
- Foundation Fighting Blindness New York Regional Research Center [C-NY05-0705-0312]
- Crowley Research Fund
- Gebroe Family Foundation
- Burroughs Welcome Career Awards in Biomedical Sciences Program
- RPB
- Columbia University
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Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is an inherited neurodegenerative disease, in which the death of mutant rod photoreceptors leads secondarily to the non-cell autonomous death of cone photoreceptors. Gene therapy is a promising treatment strategy. Unfortunately, current methods of gene delivery treat only a fraction of diseased cells, yielding retinas that are a mosaic of treated and untreated rods, as well as cones. In this study, we created two RP mouse models to test whether dying, untreated rods negatively impact treated, rescued rods. In one model, treated and untreated rods were segregated. In the second model, treated and untreated rods were diffusely intermixed, and their ratio was controlled to achieve low-, medium-, or high-efficiency rescue. Analysis of these mosaic retinas demonstrated that rescued rods (and cones) survive, even when they are greatly outnumbered by dying photoreceptors. On the other hand, the rescued photoreceptors did exhibit long-term defects in their outer segments (OSs), which were less severe when more photoreceptors were treated. In summary, our study suggests that even low-efficiency gene therapy may achieve stable survival of rescued photoreceptors in RP patients, albeit with OS dysgenesis.
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