07. The Mechanism of NGF Signaling In Innervation-dependent Corneal Epithelial Renewal: New Topical Treatment For Neurotrophic Keratopathy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Corneal clarity is essential for vision. Limbal stem cells (LSCs), the source of transparent corneal epithelial cells, are located in the basal epithelium of the limbus at the corneal-conjunctival interface, where they interact with corneal sensory nerves. Besides protection, corneal nerves may stimulate LSC activity. Pathological corneal denervation can lead to ulcers, scarring, and opacification due to impaired healing from repetitive wounds. This condition, termed Neurotrophic Keratopathy (NK), a major cause of corneal blindness, and lacks a definitive cure. Corneal nerves release various trophic factors that regulate epithelial renewal. Nerve growth factor (NGF) has shown positive effects on corneal healing and maintenance in vivo. Topical recombinant human NGF is the only FDA-approved treatment for NK. However, NGF is not efficacious in 30% of cases, requires very frequent dosing, and costs $100k per course. Moreover, NGF’s ability to heal corneal ulcers is limited. Prior studies showed NGF stimulates proliferation and maintenance of cultured human LSCs, which express TrkA and p75NTR receptors, but didn’t establish a link between NGF signaling and corneal sensory innervation-mediated trophic regulation of epithelial renewal. Furthermore, the role and molecular mechanism of NGF signaling in LSC activity remains unidentified. We hypothesize that NGF, locally expressed in its mature and premature (proNGF) forms, regulates LSC activity-dependent homeostatic and wound-induced corneal epithelial renewal via differential activation of its receptors TrkA and p75NTR, a process dependent on corneal sensory innervation. Methods: A) We conducted in vivo experiments in wild-type and mutant mice and rats to elucidate the NGF signaling mechanism in corneal innervation-dependent epithelial renewal. We examined the effect of combinations of TrkA and p75NTR agonists and antagonists on the healing of experimentally wounded corneas, both intact and surgically denervated. B) To understand the role and mechanism of NGF signaling in LSC activity and its relevance to humans, we assessed the clonogenicity of cultured human LSCs (hLSCs) by pharmacologically modulating NGF receptors, as described in (A). Results: A) While inactivation of TrkA completely prevents healing of normally innervated cornea, inactivation of p75NTR combined with a single daily dose of NGF induces complete and rapid healing of denervated de-epithelialized corneas. B) NGF or specific p75NTR inhibitor THX-B supported colonies’ formation by hLSCs that were further augmented by combination of the two compounds. Conclusions: Corneal sensory nerve-associated expression of NGF in its both forms (NGF and proNGF) regulates the proliferation and differentiation of LSCs by differentially stimulating the activity of the NGF receptors. Combined pharmacological activation and inhibition of TrkA and p75NTR, respectively, will be applied in the development of a superior NGF-based treatment of NK.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 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".