Dry Eye Mouse Model Treatment

This study was approved by the Committee on Animal Research at Yonsei Medical Center. All animal studies were performed in accordance with the Yonsei Medical Center Animal Research Guidelines, which adhere to the standards articulated in the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC) guidelines and the ARVO Statement for the Use of Animals in Ophthalmic and Vision Research. Dry eye mouse models were developed as described previously [19 (link)]. Eight-week-old C57BL/6 female mice, purchased from Orient Bio Inc. (Sungnam, Korea), were used for this experiment. Experimental dry eye was induced by the subcutaneous injection of 5 mg/mL scopolamine hydrobromide (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO) three times a day in a standard desiccating environment created by placing the mice in a chamber with a continuous air flow (15 L/min) in a room at 25 °C with an ambient humidity of 35%. Fourteen days after the initiation of the experimental dry eye, the mice were treated with or without 5 μL eye drops that contained Cact-3 (48 μM) in 1% polysorbate 80 in phosphate 4 times a day for 10 days. Ten days after the treatment, the measurement of tear volume using the phenol red thread test (Zone-Quick), corneal staining score, and relative mRNA level were performed.