Fig. 5: Combinatorial treatment with Marcks and CNTF enhances optic nerve regeneration.

A Top: experimental timeline. Bottom: representative image of optic nerve showing that combining CNTF and Marcks overexpression in RGCs produced much stronger axon regeneration 2 weeks after optic nerve crush. The right columns showed enlarged images of nerves at 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 μm distal to the crush sites marked by white boxes on the left. Scale bar: 200 μm. *: crush sites. B Quantification of axon regeneration in (A). ****p < 0.0001, ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, ns no significance. n = 7–9 mice in each group. C Representative images of retinal sections stained for RBPMS to label RGCs in the intact retina or injured retina for each condition 2 weeks after optic nerve crush. Scale bar: 20 μm. D Quantification of RGC survival in (C) showing combining Marcks and CNTF overexpression in RGCs could not promote a higher RGC survival rate compared with only CNTF expression. ****p < 0.0001, ns no significance. RGCs were analyzed from at least 7 non-adjacent retinal sections for each animal, from 4 mice per group.