Conférence de Mike Sapieha, PhD, chercheur au Centre de recherche de l’Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont et professeur agrégé au Département d’ophtalmologie de l’Université de Montréal.
Résumé
Pathological retinal neovascularization is the hallmark of primary blinding diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, age related macular degeneration and retinopathy of prematurity, yet surprisingly little is known about the causative factors. These diseases are characterized by an initial breakdown of vascular beds that yield hypoxic/ischemic central nervous tissue subjected to a constellation of biochemical and inflammatory stressors that compromise cellular function. While much effort has been invested in understanding the ensuing wave of pathological pre-retinal angiogenesis, relatively little is known of the cellular processes at play during the precursory state of neural tissue hypoxia. We will discuss novel paradigms in CNS ischemia and elaborate on the role of mechanisms that help weather neural hypoxia such as ER-stress and cellular senescence and how they paradoxically become drivers of destructive angiogenesis.
