Figure 4.

Stimulation of gene and protein expression of neurotrophins and Sema7A by 44-mer PEDF + DHA, NPD1, and PEDF + DHA. A, qPCR gene expression analysis of mouse corneas at 3 h after injury and treatments. The concentrations of the compounds are described in Table 1. All genes were significantly induced in comparison with the vehicle-treated groups (six corneas/sample, p < 0.05). Levels of transcripts were normalized to gapdh, tubb3, and tbp (primer sequences in Table 4). B, Western blot analysis of secreted BDNF, NGF, and Sema7A into the media of injured corneas in organ culture treated with the compounds or vehicle for 24 h (six corneas/sample). The data were normalized to GAPDH as an internal standard. *, p < 0.05 with t test analysis in comparison with the vehicle. The bars represent the mean of three samples ± S.D. The experiment was repeated once with similar results.