2021/05/25
Keio University School of Medicine
A research group from the Department of Ophthalmology, Keio University School of Medicine, led by Professor Emeritus Kazuo Tsubota (CEO of Tsubota Laboratory, Inc.), Senior Lecturer Toshihide Kurihara, and Jiang Xiaoyan (a resident physician at the university hospital and a student in the Doctoral Programs at the time of the research), has discovered in an international collaborative study with Professor Machelle T. Pardue of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Professor Richard A. Lang of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center that the non-visual photoreceptor OPN5 (neuropsin), expressed in retinal ganglion cells, suppresses the progression of myopia by receiving light in the short-wavelength visible spectrum.
This research group was the first in the world to report that visible light in the 360–400 nm range (hereafter, violet light) suppresses the progression of myopia. However, its mechanism of action had not been fully elucidated. Now, using a myopia model mouse they developed, the group has elucidated the mechanism by which violet light suppresses myopia progression: the light is received by the photoreceptor OPN5, which is expressed in retinal ganglion cells in the inner layer of the mouse retina and is involved in local retinal circadian rhythms, intraocular angiogenesis, and deep body temperature regulation. This reception of light maintains choroidal thickness, thereby suppressing myopia progression. These findings not only provide a theoretical basis for the myopia-suppressing effect of violet light but also contribute to elucidating the function of the recently discovered non-visual photoreceptive protein OPN5. It is hoped that this will aid in the development of useful interventions targeting OPN5 to suppress myopia progression in the future.
The results of this research will be published in the interdisciplinary general journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)" on June 1, 2021 (US Eastern Time). The online version is already available.
For the full press release, please see below.