Targeted Gene Candidates for Treatment and Early Diagnosis of Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Abstract

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an eye disease that impairs the sharp and central vision need for daily activities. Recent advances in molecular biology research not only lead to a better understanding of the genetics and pathophysiology of AMD but also to the development of applications based on targeted gene expressions to treat the disease. Clarification of molecular pathways that causing to development and progression in dry and wet types of AMD needs comprehensive and comparative investigations in particular precious biopsies involving peripheral blood samples from the patients. Therefore, in this investigation, dry and wet types of AMD patients and healthy individuals were aimed at investigating in regard to targeted gene candidates by using gene expression analysis for the first time. 13 most potent candidate genes involved in neurodegeneration were selected via in silico approach and investigated through gene expression analysis to suggest new targets for disease therapy. For the analyses, 30 individuals (10 dry and 10 wet types AMD patients and 10 healthy people) were involved in the study. SYBR-Green based Real-Time PCR analysis was performed on isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) to analyze differentially expressed genes related to these cases. According to the investigations, only the CRP gene was found to be upregulated for both dry and wet disease types. When the downregulated genes were analyzed, it was found that 11 genes were commonly decreased for both dry and wet types in the aspect of expression pattern. From these genes, CFH, CX3CR1, FLT1, and TIMP3 were found to have the most downregulated gene expression properties for both diseases. From these results, it might be concluded that these common upregulated and downregulated genes could be used as targets for early diagnosis and treatment for AMD.

Identifying the stability of housekeeping genes to be used for the quantitative real-time PCR normalization in retinal tissue of streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

“…Despite the growing importance of RT-qPCR technology in recent years, few studies have been conducted to validate the stability of HKG for use as endogenous controls in ocular disorders [43][44][45] , none of them, however, is unique to retinal or diabetic retinal tissue. As a result, identifying a stable expressed HKG has become a significant problem for precise normalisation procedures, particularly in the case of precious biopsies such as retinal tissue from the samples [45] . In this regard, molecular genetic analysis of a particular gene or biochemical marker is critical for discovering innovative therapeutics in ocular disorders like diabetic retinopathy (DR).…”

Association of Microrna-153-3p Expression in Response to Treatment with Imatinib in Patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

“…Since miRs are powerful regulators, they may contribute to the emergence of drug resistance because they regulate other genes involved in drug transport or the activation of essential signalling pathways in addition to the gene's expression BCR-ABL1 (8,9) . It has been discovered that IM-resistant CML cells exhibit downregulation of the miR-153-3p, which has been linked to many different sorts of malignancies.…”

Predictive Biomarkers of Age-Related Macular Degeneration Response to Anti-VEGF Treatment

“…Furthermore, perturbed macrophage function is thought to lead to the development of features resembling AMD in mice strains deficient in chemokine receptors or their ligands [16]. Thus, plasmatic solutes and PBMCs seem to have an important role in AMD physiopathology [17][18][19][20] and have been widely used to study biomarkers related to AMD [21][22][23][24][25].…”