Puri Sudan, Kenyon Brendan M, Hamrah Pedram
Center for Translational Ocular Immunology, Tufts Medical Center, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
Department of Ophthalmology, Tufts Medical Center, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
Biomedicines. 2022 Aug 16;10(8):1985. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines10081985.
The transparency of the cornea along with its dense sensory innervation and resident leukocyte populations make it an ideal tissue to study interactions between the nervous and immune systems. The cornea is the most densely innervated tissue of the body and possesses both immune and vascular privilege, in part due to its unique repertoire of resident immune cells. Corneal nerves produce various neuropeptides that have a wide range of functions on immune cells. As research in this area expands, further insights are made into the role of neuropeptides and their immunomodulatory functions in the healthy and diseased cornea. Much remains to be known regarding the details of neuropeptide signaling and how it contributes to pathophysiology, which is likely due to complex interactions among neuropeptides, receptor isoform-specific signaling events, and the inflammatory microenvironment in disease. However, progress in this area has led to an increase in studies that have begun modulating neuropeptide activity for the treatment of corneal diseases with promising results, necessitating the need for a comprehensive review of the literature. This review focuses on the role of neuropeptides in maintaining the homeostasis of the ocular surface, alterations in disease settings, and the possible therapeutic potential of targeting these systems.
角膜的透明度、密集的感觉神经支配以及常驻白细胞群体，使其成为研究神经系统与免疫系统相互作用的理想组织。角膜是人体神经支配最密集的组织，具有免疫特权和血管特权，部分原因在于其独特的常驻免疫细胞库。角膜神经产生多种神经肽，这些神经肽对免疫细胞具有广泛的功能。随着该领域研究的扩展，人们对神经肽在健康和患病角膜中的作用及其免疫调节功能有了更深入的了解。关于神经肽信号传导的细节及其如何导致病理生理学变化，仍有许多未知之处，这可能是由于神经肽、受体亚型特异性信号事件以及疾病中的炎症微环境之间的复杂相互作用所致。然而，该领域的进展促使越来越多的研究开始调节神经肽活性以治疗角膜疾病，并取得了有前景的结果，因此有必要对相关文献进行全面综述。本综述重点关注神经肽在维持眼表稳态中的作用、疾病状态下的变化以及靶向这些系统的潜在治疗潜力。
