Gene Expression Profile of Fibrovascular Membrane Associated with Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy

Proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) is a vision-threatening disorder characterized by the formation of cicatricial fibrovascular membranes leading to traction retinal detachment. Despite the recent advance in the treatment of PDR such as vitreoretinal surgery with use of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) drug as an adjunct, it still remains vision-threatening disease. In order to identify genes associated with the pathogenesis of PDR, we performed gene expression analyses in fibrovascular membrane in patients with PDR using DNA microarray technology. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Kyushu University Hospital and Fukuoka University Chikushi Hospital, and the surgical specimens were handled in accordance with the ethical standards of the 1989 Declaration of Helsinki. All patients gave informed consent before inclusion in the study. Fibrovascular membranes (FVMs) were surgically dissected from the retinal surface with horizontal scissors of patients with PDR undergoing pars plana vitrectomy. These specimens were classified into active and inactive according to the clinical findings of neovascularization (NV) in the FVMs.Total RNA were extracted from the FVMs. RNA from human retina was obtained from Clontech (Palo Alto, CA).