Attainment of polarity promotes growth factor secretion by retinal pigment epithelial cells: Relevance to age-related macular degeneration

• DOI: 10.18632/aging.100111
• Publication Date: 2016-03-06T04:35:10Z
• Authors: Shozo Sonoda; Parameswaran G. S...; Satoru Kase; Christine Spee; Stephen J Ryan; Ram Kannan; David R Hinton
• Keywords: PEDF; Cell polarity

The antiangiogenic and neurotrophic growth factor, pigment epithelial derived factor (PEDF), the proangiogenic vascular endothelial factor-A (VEGF), are released from retinal (RPE) cells where they play a critical role in pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Since RPE polarity may be altered advanced AMD, we studied effect polarization differentiated, human monolayer cultures on expression secretion PEDF VEGF. Polarized demonstrated apical microvilli, tight junction proteins, localization Na/K- ATPase, high transepithelial resistance (490 ± 17 Ω•cm2). was about 1000 fold greater than that for VEGF both polarized non-polarized cultures. Polarization increased secretion, which predominantly apical, by 34 (p<0.02) basolateral, 5.7 (p<0.02). Treatment with bone morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP-4) had no or but resulted dose-dependent >2-fold increase basolateral (p<0.05) Our data show is an important determinant level support contention loss AMD results marked retina potentially leading to photoreceptor blindness.