Application of corneal injury models in dual fluorescent reporter transgenic mice to understand the roles of the cornea and limbus in angiogenic and lymphangiogenic privilege.

ABSTRACT: The role of the corneal epithelium and limbus in corneal avascularity and pathological neovascularization (NV) is not well understood. To investigate the contributions of the corneal and limbal epithelia in angiogenic and lymphangiogenic privilege, we designed five injury models involving debridement of different portions of the cornea and limbus and applied them to the dual-fluorescence reporter Prox1-GFP/Flt1-DsRed mouse, which permits in vivo imaging of blood and lymphatic vessels via fluorescence microscopy. Debridement of the whole cornea resulted in significant hemangiogenesis (HA) and lymphangiogenesis (LA), while that of the whole limbus yielded minimal corneal HA or LA. Following hemilimbal plus whole corneal debridement, corneal NV occurred only through the non-injured aspect of

SUBMITTER: Gao X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6707148 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature