OBTAINING OF AN EXPERIMENTAL RETINOPATHY MODEL IN RABBITS USING REPEATED INTRAVITREAL ADMINISTRATION OF VEGF AND BFGF

Retinopathy is one of the causes of early vision loss among the working population. Retinopathy is a common complication of diabetes. However, preclinical testing of new therapies in animal models of diabetic retinopathy remains complicated by the long time to symptom onset and the high cost of animal housing. One of the solutions is to create models similar to retinopathy without inducing diabetes. One of the approaches for such method is to induce retinopathy using factors such as vascular endothelial growth factor and basic fibroblast growth factor. In our study, we tested the ability of a combination of these factors at low concentrations to induce a stable retinopathy model. The results showed that, despite the fact that the concentration of the factors was reduced, repeated administration of them resulted in a model exhibiting all the key features of the disease.