Figure 3.

Survival rate of retinal ganglion cells after optic nerve injury. The RGCs of inbred adult BALB/c were retrogradely labeled with FluoroGold (see Materials and Methods) 10 days after being immunized with 50 μg of Cop-1 emulsified in CFA. Control mice were injected with PBS in CFA (n = 8−12 in each group). Three days after labeling of RGCs, mice were subjected to a severe crush injury of the intraorbital portion of the optic nerve. Two weeks after injury the retinas were excised, and their labeled RGCs were counted (see Materials and Methods). Relative to nonimmunized controls, survival rates were significantly higher (P < 0.001, Student's t test) in mice immunized with Cop-1 in CFA.