Does CNTF mediate the effect of intraocular inflammation on optic nerve regeneration?
1The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China and 2Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Correspondence to: L. Benowitz, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA E-mail: larry.benowitz{at}childrens.harvard.edu’ + u + ‘@’ + d + ”//–> Received December 27, 2007. Accepted January 27, 2008. Sir, we wish to comment on the paper Astrocyte-derived CNTF switches mature retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) to a regenerative state following inflammatory stimulation (Muller et al., 2007). RGCs, the projection neurons of the eye, are normally unable to regenerate their axons if the optic nerve is injured. However, they can be stimulated to do so by inducing an inflammatory reaction in the eye (Leon et al., 2000; Yin et al., 2003). The evidence presented later argues against CNTF playing a central role in this transformation. The authors do not demonstrate that CNTF can directly stimulate RGCs to regenerate axons. They show that co-culturing retinal explants with len
