Uveitis

Uveitis, a sight-threatening inflammatory disease of the eye, can result from immune-mediated responses against eye antigens.  IN autoimmune Uveitis, T cells appear to play an important role in the pathogenicity of disease.  To develop the disease, autoreactive T cells must be activated outside the eye and then must pass the blood-ocular barrier, enter the eye, and then cross-react with eye autoantigens.  Despite  significant research efforts and advances in diagnosis and therapy, ocular autoimmune diseases, which cover a variety of eye diseases with different clinical symptoms and pathogenicity, remain significant causes of visual important in humans.  We have found that in a rat model of uveitis, a novel RTL is able to prevent and to treat active and passive anterior Uveitis by blocking the activation of pathogenic cells, which prevent the uveitogenic T cells from entering the eye.