Heterotypic RPE-choroidal endothelial cell contact increases choroidal endothelial cell transmigration via PI 3-kinase and Rac1
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the major cause of non-preventable blindness. Severe forms of AMD involve breaching of the retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) barrier by underlying choroidal endothelial cells (CECs), followed by migration into, and subsequent neovascularization of the neurosensory retina. However, little is known about the interactions between RPE and CECs and the signaling events leading to CEC transmigration. While soluble chemotactic factors secreted from RPE can contribute to inappropriate CEC transmigration, other unidentified stimuli may play an additional role. Using a coculture model that maintains the natural structural orientation of CECs to the basal aspect of RPE, we show that “contact” with RPE and/or RPE extracellular matrix increases CEC transmigration of the RPE barrier. From a biochemical standpoint, contact between CECs and RPE results in an increase in the activity of the GTPase Rac1 within the CECs; this increase is dependent on upstream activation of PI 3-K and Akt1. To confirm a link between these signaling molecules and increased CEC transmigration, we performed transmigration assays while inhibiting both PI 3-K and Rac1 activity, and observed that both decreased CEC transmigration. We hypothesize that contact between CECs and RPE stimulates a signaling pathway involving PI 3-K, Akt1, and Rac1 that facilitates CEC transmigration across the RPE barrier, an important step in the development of neovascular AMD.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".