Keywords

Glaucoma, PNU 282987, porcine eyes, nicotinic acetylcholine receptor activator

Disciplines

Eye Diseases | Ophthalmology

Mentor

Dr. David Linn

Abstract

The retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) from porcine eyes were extracted to work towards a potential therapy for glaucoma. There is not a known cause of glaucoma or the apoptosis of RGCs that cause the eventual blindness associated with glaucoma. The goal of this protocol is to protect the RGCs from dying by adding a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor activator to induce neuronal proliferation and protect against glutamate-induced excitotoxicity. PNU 282987 was used as the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor activator due to its neuroprotective properties. We hypothesized that we would observe the proliferation of RGCs (associated with increased cell numbers) with varying levels of PNU 282987 compared to a set of untreated control plates. For each protocol three plates labelled A were left untreated, three plates labelled B were treated with 40 μL of PNU 282987 (100 μM), and three plates labelled C were treated with 80 μL of PNU 282987 (200 μM). We analyzed pictures of the plates using Image J. The average cell count and average area were analyzed for our purposes to check for the proliferation of RGCs and determine the size of the cells that survived and replicated. Although there seemed to be an increased average cell count in plates B compared to plates A and C and an increase in average area in plates C compared to plates A and B, our data did not have statistical significance. Further experiments will have to be conducted to determine if PNU 282987 significantly induces the proliferation of RGCs, and if its neuroprotective properties can be used as a potential treatment for glaucoma or provide further insight into the cause of this disease.

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