ABSTRACT
Paul G. McMenamin, Season Yeung, and Serge Camelo School of Anatomy and Human Biology, University of Western Australia,
Crawley, Western Australia, Australia
INTRODUCTION
A number of vision-threatening eye conditions, for example, corneal transplant rejection, infections, response to intraocular tumors, choroidal neovascularization, and uveitis, have an immunological or inflammatory basis. One of the hurdles in the treatment and therapy of these conditions is that their immunopathogenesis is incompletely understood. Antigens (Ags) derived from donor corneal grafts, the lens, infectious agents, damaged retina, or degenerating/growing tumors in the eye can all potentially generate immune responses, either of an innate or adaptive type, and in the latter case these may be of an immunogenic or tolerogenic nature. Antigen presenting cells (APCs) are crucially positioned in the pathways that determine the nature and types of immune response. Therefore, the nature, function and distribution of APCs in the eye in relation to sites of exposure to potential pathogenic agents will likely be important determining factors in the resultant immune response. For the purposes of this review the term “APC(s)” is used inclusively for both macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs). Other APCs, such as B cells (which seldom occur in the normal eye), or parenchymal/non-bone marrow-derived cells that can potentially assume an APC function in abnormally disrupted states, are not the focus of this review.
