Abstract
Mammalian retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the central nervous system (CNS) often die after optic nerve injury and surviving RGCs fail to regenerate their axons, eventually resulting in irreversible vision loss. Manipulation of a diverse group of genes can significantly boost optic nerve regeneration of mature RGCs by reactivating developmental-like growth programs or suppressing growth inhibitory pathways. By injury of the vision pathway near their brain targets, a few studies have shown that regenerated RGC axons could form functional synapses with targeted neurons but exhibited poor neural conduction or partial functional recovery. Therefore, the functional restoration of eye-to-brain pathways remains a greatly challenging issue. Here, we review recent advances in long-distance optic nerve regeneration and the subsequent reconnecting to central targets. By summarizing our current strategies for promoting functional recovery, we hope to provide potential insights into future exploration in vision reformation after neural injuries.
Highlights
Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) relay visual related information from the eye to the brain through their axons, which collectively form the optic nerve (Laha et al, 2017)
Optic nerve injuries induced by trauma, glaucoma or neurodegenerative diseases often result in loss of visual functions and eventually blindness
As central nervous system (CNS) neurons, mature RGCs have greatly reduced intrinsic capacity to regenerate their axons after traumatic injuries or neurodegeneration, eventually leading to loss of vision (Chun and Cestari, 2017; Laha et al, 2017)
Summary
Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) relay visual related information from the eye to the brain through their axons, which collectively form the optic nerve (Laha et al, 2017). Manipulation of several genes in RGCs has been shown to significantly boost the intrinsic axon regeneration capacity of mature RGCs, such as Klf4/9 (Moore et al, 2009; Apara et al, 2017), Socs (Smith et al, 2009), B-RAF (O’Donovan et al, 2014), c-myc (Belin et al, 2015), GSK3β (Guo et al, 2016; Miao et al, 2016), Lin (Wang et al, 2018), and P53 (Ma et al, 2019) These genes have been shown to regulate optic nerve regeneration, almost none of them alone could be manipulated to induce long-distance axon regrowth in vivo. Long-distance axon regeneration, as the first step of the eye-to-brain reconnection, is crucial in the restoration of visual function following optic nerve injury. It was reported that a combination of multiple factors, such as Pten/Socs co-deletion, inflammation/cAMP/Pten knockout, or Rheb overexpression/visual stimulation, could enhance optic nerve regeneration to reconnect with selected brain nuclei
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