Retina Degeneration, Neuroprotection and Repair

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the upcoming Special Issue “Retina Neurodegeneration, Neuroprotection and Repair”.

Globally, 1.2 billion people live with blindness or a vision impairment that could not be prevented or addressed. Age-related macular degeneration (170 million), glaucoma (7 million), diabetic retinopathy (3 million), and retinitis pigmentosa (1.5 million) are some of the main pathologies leading to irreversible visual impairment and blindness.

The capacity for endogenous repair is effectively absent in the mammalian central nervous system, including the retina, which exhibits no intrinsic regenerative capacities; therefore, retinal degenerative diseases such as those listed above result in permanent and irreversible impairment.

Currently, great scientific efforts are focused on bringing sight and a better understanding of: i) the mechanisms that lead to the degeneration of key retinal cell populations such as photoreceptors and retinal ganglion cells; ii) the neuroinflammatory response that accompanied the degeneration, involving retinal microglia cells and inflammatory mediators; iii) circulatory blood flow implications in the progression of the neurodegenerative process; iv) identification of new molecular targets to delay or impede the progression of the degeneration; v) regenerative medicine approaches such as gene therapy and cell replacement strategies to restore function loss.

This Special Issue shall cover results of studies using experimental models (animal or cell culture models) to investigate the mechanism of progression of retina degeneration and cell death, strategies to stop or delay the progression, including neuroprotective pharmaceutical target and/or therapeutic approaches based on regenerative medicine such as gene and cell therapy, to restore vision. 

We warmly welcome short communications, original research articles, and review articles for this Special Issue.

Dr. Arturo Ortín-Martínez
Dr. Luis Alarcón-Martínez
Dr. Sandra Petrus-Reurer
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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