Myeloid cells regulate retinal neovascularization via SOCS3

Abstract

Neovascularization is the leading cause of vision loss in retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). Inflammation and myeloid cells are involved in retinal angiogenesis. However, the underlying mechanisms of how myeloid cells control neovascularization in ROP remain unknown. We and others previously reported that suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS3) is induced in retinopathy. To investigate whether myeloid cells regulate retinal angiogenesis via SOCS3 in ROP, we used myeloid lineage specific SOCS3 loss-of-function (conditional knockout, cKO) mice and gain-of-function (conditional overexpression, cOE) mice and generated ROP mouse model - mice with oxygen induced retinopathy (OIR) by exposing mice to 75% oxygen from postnatal day (P)7 to P12 for 5 days, and then returned to normal air until P17. Retinas were collected for analysis including quantification of retinal neovascularization, gene expression, immune cell profiling and single cell sequencing. Our results showed that mice with myeloid SOCS3 deficiency had a substantial increase in pathological retinal neovascularization, whereas overexpression of SOCS3 in myeloid cells prevented pathological retinal neovascularization in response to OIR. Our single-cell sequencing data showed that population of myeloid lineage cells including microglia, macrophages and neutrophils was changed in mice with OIR and controlled by SOCS3. Therefore, myeloid cells are involved in retinal neovascularization via SOCS3 in ROP. Manipulating SOCS3 expression in myeloid cells may provide a new way to cure neovascularization in retinas. Supported by grants from NIH (R01EY030140, R01EY029238) and from BrightFocus Foundation