RESEARCH ARTICLE
Dual Targeting of Retinal Vasculature in the Mouse Model of Oxygen Induced Retinopathy
Michael DeNiroa*, 1, 2, Futwan Al-Mohanna3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 4
First Page: 60
Last Page: 74
Publisher Id: TODIAJ-4-60
DOI: 10.2174/1876524601104010060
Article History:
Received Date: 3/07/2010Revision Received Date: 13/01/2011
Acceptance Date: 16/01/2011
Electronic publication date: 28/3/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) plays crucial roles in retinal neovascularization (NV) by upregulating its target genes, which are involved in anaerobic energy metabolism, angiogenesis, cell survival, cell invasion, and drug resistance. Therefore, it is apparent that the inhibition of HIF-1 activity may be a strategy for treating retinal angiopathies. Many efforts to develop new HIF-1-targeting agents have been made by both academic and pharmaceutical industry laboratories. The future success of these efforts will be a new class of HIF-1-targeting agents, which could be utilized in the treatment of several ocular pathologies. This review focuses on the potential of HIF-1 as a target molecule for the treatment of retinal NV, and on possible strategies to inhibit HIF-1 activity. In addition, we introduce YC-1 as a new anti- HIF-1, anti-neovascular agent in the retinal model. Although YC-1 was originally developed as a potential therapeutic agent for thrombosis and hypertension, recent studies demonstrated that YC-1 suppressed HIF-1 activity and vascular endothelial growth factor expression in retinal microvascular endothelial cells. Moreover, it inhibited retinal NV in the oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) mouse model without serious toxicity during the treatment period. Thus, we propose that YC-1 is a good lead compound for the development of new anti-HIF-1, anti-neovascular agents that could be used in the retinal pathologies.