Presence of RPE-produced VEGF in a timely manner is critical to choroidal vascular development

Abstract

Choroidal circulation is responsible for approximately 80% of blood supplies to the eye and its health is essential to visual function. To gain better understanding of choroidal vascular system, we (1) generated mice with inducible disruption of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and (2) developed a semiquantitative assay to evaluate the density of choroidal vessels in these mice. In this chapter, we report an improvement to our assay by staining choroidal vessels through perfusion of fluorescently labeled concanavalin A. We will also review our investigation on the temporal role of the RPE-produced VEGF in choroidal vascular development in mice. Our study establishes a timeline that the presence of the RPE-produced VEGF from embryonic day 10 to 15 is critical to choroidal vascular development. Therefore, mice with induced disruption of the RPE-produced VEGF after organogenesis do not have apparent developmental defects and may have utilities in investigating postdevelopmental function of VEGF, which is critical to the understanding of the relationship between the RPE and choriocapillaris in the pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.