期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2017
卷号：114
期号：20
页码：5259-5264
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1615394114
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：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.
