Background Posterior capsule opacification (PCO), the major complication of cataract surgery, would induce visual loss. In this study, the involvement of connective transforming growth factor (CTGF) in the development of posterior capsule opacification (PCO) in bovine lens epithelial cells (BLECs) has been investigated.
Methods Perparing by recombination CTGF, the migration ability of BLECs was mesured by transwell inserts assay. After treating with recombination trasforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-beta1), in combination with CTGF short interference RNA (SiRNA) in BLECs, gene and protein expression of α-smooth muscle actin (alpha-SMA), fibronectin (FN) and CTGF were characterized with Real-Time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (Real-Time RT-PCR) and Western blot. In addition, JNK and PI3K/Akt were evaluated by Western blot for elucidating the mechanism of CTGF-induced FN production.
Results As the downstream regulatory factor of TGF-beta, CTGF could significant promote bovine lens epithelial cells migration. The expression of CTGF was blocked by CTGF SiRNA in BLECs, and the expression of alpha-SMA and FN also decreased at mRNA and protein level. In the presence of JNK inhibitor (SP-600125) or transfected by JNK SiRNA, CTGF-induced protein expression of FN increase was completely inhibited. Akt inhibitor (LY-294002) and Akt SiRNA had no effect on CTGF-stimulated protein expression of FN.
Conclusions These results suggest that CTGF play an important role in the lens epithelial cells migration, transdifferentiation and deposition of extracellular materials (ECM) in posterior capsule opacification. FN expression which induced by CTGF is mediated through the JNK pathway, but not affected by PI3K/Akt pathway. Therefore, RNA interference inhibits the expression of CTGF would be a new molecular target in prevention and therapeutics of PCO.