The role of leucine-rich alpha-2-gycoprotein 1 (Lrg1) in retinal vascular development and disease

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The uncontrolled growth of new blood vessels and damaging changes to existing blood vessels in the retina, the light sensitive part of the eye, is a major cause of blindness. These harmful changes occur in a number of different eye diseases but the most common is diabetes where loss of vision can affect up to 40% of patients. Although some advances have been made in the treatment of these conditions they still remain very difficult to control. There is therefore an urgent need to understand in much greater detail the biological mechanisms that cause these changes so that we can identify new therapeutic targets, especially during the early stages of disease, to which drugs can be developed. Our objective in this project is to investigate the role of a newly discovered molecule called Lrg1, which our preliminary data have shown to be produced at high levels by abnormal retinal blood vessels and to cause blood vessel cell proliferation. In this project we will investigate in detail how Lrg1 regulates the growth of blood vessels in the retina during normal development and how it may contribute to the development of harmful blood vessels that occur in many eye diseases. By gaining insight into the biology of this molecule we aim to validate it as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of sight-threatening retinal vascular disease.