RETINAL DEGENERATION AND TRANSPLANTATION IN THE ROYAL-COLLEGE OF SURGEONS RAT

The Royal College of Surgeons rat provides a valuable animal model for examining the ontogeny of inherited or acquired photoreceptor degener ation and for assessing various treatment paradigms. Here we describe a sequence of events in which photoreceptor loss induces secondary cha nges that ultimately result in a progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells. The functional consequences of photoreceptor loss are described and compared with those observed in dystrophic animals that received grafts of pigment epithelial cells at an early stage in the degenerati ve process. The results of this work suggest that transplantation migh t slow or halt the progress of photoreceptor loss in certain human ret inal degenerative conditions, provided suitable safeguards have been p ut in place.