Smedowski Adrian, Liu Xiaonan, Pietrucha-Dutczak Marita, Matuszek Iwona, Varjosalo Markku, Lewin-Kowalik Joanna
Chair and Department of Physiology, School of Medicine in Katowice, Medical University of Silesia, Medykow 18, 40-752 Katowice, Poland.
Department of Ophthalmology, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, 70211 Kuopio, Finland.
Sci Rep. 2016 Apr 1;6:23187. doi: 10.1038/srep23187.
Glaucoma is an optic neuropathy that leads to irreversible blindness. Because the current therapies are not sufficient to protect against glaucoma-induced visual impairment, new treatment approaches are necessary to prevent disease progression. Cell transplantation techniques are currently considered to be among the most promising opportunities for nervous system damage treatment. The beneficial effects of undifferentiated cells have been investigated in experimental models of glaucoma, however experiments were accompanied by various barriers, which would make putative treatment difficult or even impossible to apply in a clinical setting. The novel therapy proposed in our study creates conditions to eliminate some of the identified barriers described for precursor cells transplantation and allows us to observe direct neuroprotective and pro-regenerative effects in ongoing optic neuropathy without additional modifications to the transplanted cells. We demonstrated that the proposed novel Schwann cell therapy might be promising, effective and easy to apply, and is safer than the alternative cell therapies for the treatment of glaucoma.
青光眼是一种导致不可逆失明的视神经病变。由于目前的治疗方法不足以预防青光眼引起的视力损害，因此需要新的治疗方法来防止疾病进展。细胞移植技术目前被认为是治疗神经系统损伤最有前景的方法之一。在青光眼的实验模型中已经研究了未分化细胞的有益作用，然而实验伴随着各种障碍，这使得假定的治疗在临床环境中难以甚至无法应用。我们研究中提出的新疗法创造了条件，以消除一些已确定的前体细胞移植障碍，并使我们能够在进行性视神经病变中观察到直接的神经保护和促再生作用，而无需对移植细胞进行额外修饰。我们证明，所提出的新型雪旺细胞疗法可能是有前景的、有效的且易于应用的，并且比用于治疗青光眼的替代细胞疗法更安全。
