Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Dec 15, 2021; 12(12): 2050-2057
Published online Dec 15, 2021. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v12.i12.2050
Inhibitory effect of maspinon neovascularization in diabetic retinopathy
Feng Qiu, Hui-Juan Tong
Feng Qiu, Department of Ophthalmology, Shenyang Fourth People’s Hospital, Shenyang 110031, Liaoning Province, China
Hui-Juan Tong, Department of Nursing, Shenyang Medical College, Shenyang 110034, Liaoning Province, China
Author contributions: Qiu F was involved in the data curation and writing of the original draft; Tong HJ performed the data curation and formal analysis, and participated in the writing and editing of the manuscript; All authors have read and approved the final.
Supported by Liaoning Province Natural Science Foundation, No. 2020-BS-277.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: The study was reviewed and approved by Shenyang Fourth People’s Hospital Institutional Review Board.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicting interests.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hui-Juan Tong, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Nursing, Shenyang Medical College, No. 146 North Huanghe Avenue, Shenyang 110034, Liaoning Province, China. thj_9921@163.com
Received: July 7, 2021
Peer-review started: July 7, 2021
First decision: July 28, 2021
Revised: August 9, 2021
Accepted: December 8, 2021
Article in press: December 8, 2021
Published online: December 15, 2021
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a serious and potentially blinding complication of diabetes mellitus. Retinal neovascularization is one of the main pathological features of proliferative DR, and inhibiting retinal neovascularization is a research focus.

AIM

The aim was to evaluate the effect of intravitreal injection of recombinant human maspin on neovascularization in DR.

METHODS

An oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) mouse model was used to simulate neovascularization in DR. New born C57BL/6J mice were randomly divided to a normal control group, a maspin injection OIR group, and an OIR group. The mice in the maspin injection OIR group were injected with recombinant human maspin in the bilateral vitreous cavity on postnatal day P12, and those in the OIR group were injected with sterile phosphate buffered saline. The protein expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha (HIF-1α) in the retina was measured by western blotting, and the mRNA expression of VEGF and HIF-1α was measured by real-time polymerase chain reaction. The vascular cell nuclei that broke through the inner limiting membrane (ILM) were counted in haematoxylin-eosin stained retinal sections.

RESULTS

It was found that the number of vascular cell nuclei breaking through the ILM was 31.8 ± 8.75 in the OIR group, which was significantly more than that in the normal control group (P < 0.001). The number of vascular cell nuclei breaking through the ILM was 6.19 ± 2.91 in the maspin injection OIR group, which was significantly less than that in OIR group (P < 0.01). The relative protein and mRNA expression of VEGF and HIF-1α was significantly lower in the retinas in the maspin injection OIR group than in those in the OIR group (P < 0.01).

CONCLUSION

Maspin inhibited neovascularization in DR by modulating the HIF-1α/VEGF pathway, which provides a potential and effective strategy for the treatment of DR.

Keywords: Maspin, Diabetic retinopathy, Neovascularization, Vascular endothelial growth factor, Hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha

Core Tip: The aim of our study was to evaluate the effectiveness of intravitreal injection of recombinant human maspin on neovascularization in diabetic retinopathy. A mouse model of oxygen-induced retinopathy was used to simulate neovascularization in diabetic retinopathy. Maspin inhibited neovascularization in this model by modulating the hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha/vascular endothelial growth factor pathway, which provides a potential and effective strategy for the treatment of diabetic retinopathy.