Melatonin Exerts Protective Effects in RPE-1 Cells via Wnt — 23p — Devin Messer, Abigail Goebel, Abigail Renner

The Wnt Signaling pathway is a critical biochemical pathway that plays pivotal roles in cell growth, differentiation, and migration. Wnt signaling is a group of signal transduction pathways that are found to regulate cell fate determination, cell migration, cell polarity, neural patterning, and organogenesis during embryonic development. Wnt is also crucial in retinal development, like retinal field establishment, retinal and hyaloid vasculogenesis, cornea and lens development, eye field formation, maintenance of retinal stem cells, and neuronal specification in many Wnt-regulated processes. Uncontrolled Wnt signaling may cause retinal diseases like vitreoretinopathy, retinitis pigmentosa, Norries disease, and macular degeneration. It has also been reported that daily supplementation of melatonin slows retinal disease progression, specifically retinitis pigmentosa. We aimed to investigate the role of Wnt signaling in retinal cells (RPE-1) to test the hypothesis that melatonin may exert protective effects on RPE-1 cells via Wnt-dependent mechanisms. HTERT-RPE-1 cells are immortalized retinal pigment cells. In this study, we report that when RPE-1 cells become stressed, Wnt signaling increases cell survival and reduces cytotoxicity. Melatonin was also found to protect cells from chemical oxidative stress in a manner dependent upon Wnt. When RPE-1 cells were exposed to UV light, it was found that melatonin may also protect retinal cells from light-induced degeneration. This research utilizes several in-vitro models of retinal degenerative disease and is vital to lay the groundwork for developing treatment strategies for clinical conditions like retinitis pigmentosa via targeting Wnt activity. Future goals of this study aim to investigate Wnt-related gene expression and investigate further the mechanism by which melatonin and Wnt are protective of different wavelengths of light.

Black Hills State University
Dr. Pawlus