Abstract
Purpose :
Corneal wound healing response to vision correction surgeries depends on injury imposed on the cornea. Using quantitative proteomics we studied corneal response to LASIK and SMILE surgeries at the stroma and in patient tears longitudinally collected upto 3 months post surgery
Methods :
Paired cadaver eyes (n=3) not suitable for transplantation were randomly selected to perform LASIK and SMILE surgeries. The corneas were treated for -6 diopter with maximum ablation of 74-75µ and 85µ for LASIK and SMILE respectively. Tears were collected on Schirmers’ strip in patients (n=3) who underwent LASIK and SMILE surgeries on contralateral eyes at pre-op, 1 and 3 month post-surgery. Independent iTRAQ quantitative proteomics analyses were performed on the stromal tissue and in patient tears
Results :
Increased levels of cytokeratins and cell cycle proteins were observed in stroma and in tears of SMILE patients at 3 months indicating faster wound healing in SMILE. Reduced levels of ECM proteins such as COL6A1, A2 observed in SMILE indicate a stable ECM. Lys C, an inflammatory protein was observed at lower levels in SMILE indicating a modulated inflammatory response in SMILE stroma and in tears 3 month post surgery whereas LASIK is associated with extensive ECM remodeling and more inflammation
Conclusions :
Quantitative proteomics analysis reveals novel molecular insights into wound healing mechanism in stroma and patient tears. Our results indicate faster corneal wound healing and stable ECM in response to SMILE whereas these processes appear to be more dynamic in LASIK besides strong inflammatory response.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.