Effects Of Retinal Microvascular Pericytes On Growth And Tight Junctions' Formation Of Endothelial Cells In Vitro

BackgroundRetinal neovascularization is pivotal pathological procedures in various retinal neovascular diseases such as proliferative diabetic retinopathy, retinopathy of prematurity and retinal vein occlusion, which bring severe visual impairment extensively and attract many researches to focus on them. In these diseases, the pathologic new vessels, characterized by defective vascular remodeling and abnormal vascular permeability, are leading cause of retinal edema, hemorrhage and proliferation.Retinal microvessel walls are composed of two cell types - retinal microvascualr endothelial cells (RMECs) and pericytes. Interaction between both cells, as well as multiple growth factors and signal pathways involve timely and spatially, is the mainly procedure in retinal neovascularization. Equilibrium of the two cells is vital in maintaining functional vessels and impairment of either kind of cells will certainly affect the other. A lot of studies have been performed on endothelial cells, which play a predominant role in angiogenesis. Pericytes, proposed to play a role in angiogenesis regulation and functional vessels formation, have always been overlooked. Loss of pericytes, termed as "pericytes drop-out", correlated with the on-set of neovascularization in early diabetic retinopathy.