Enhance effort for study of neuroprotection of degenerative fundus disease

Abstract

Degenerative fundus disease, occurred commonly in clinic, is one kind of incurable blind eye diseases and has become the "hot spot" and "difficulty spot" in research of prevention and treatment of fundus disease. The common pathological characteristics of degenerative fundus disease are reduction of retinal nerve cells and disfunction of retina. To treat degenerative fundus disease, it is necessary to retain remaining retinal nerve cells and to prevent secondary cell death for reserving normal retinal function and preparing for regeneration of retinal nerve cells. To delay or stop progression of pathological changes, neuroprotection is mainly focused on changes of pathological process, and try to block stages of injury reactions. Composed of methods of neuropharmacology, non-drug methods of neuroprotection and anti-apoptosis, effects of anti-apoptosis and promote survival coming from brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF), neurotrophin-3 (NT-3), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), Bcl-2, etc, suggested the feasibility and effectivity of neuroprotection for treatment of degenerative fundus disease. The safety and effectivity of Phase I trial also suggest the promise of using encapsulated cell technology (ECT) as new technology for neuroprotective treatment of degenerative fundus disease.