[A study on effect of bFGF, EGF and NGF on growth of cultured human corneal endothelial cells].

PURPOSE: To investigate effect of bFGF, EGF and NGF on growth of cultured human corneal endothelial cells. METHODS: Cultured human corneal endothelial cells were seeded into individual wells of 96-well tissue culture plate with the same culture media containing separately bFGF, EGF or NGF with a serial of concentrations of 0 ng/ml, 1 ng/ml, 3 ng/ml, 10 ng/ml, 30 ng/ml and 100 ng/ml and then cultured for 5 days. Then MTT method was used to detect the growth of the cells. RESULTS: The averaged OD values of the cell wells containing bFGF with a serial of concentrations of 0 ng/ml, 1 ng/ml, 3 ng/ml, 10 ng/ml, 30 ng/ml and 100 ng/ml were 0.224 +/- 0.045, 0.239 +/- 0.040, 0.262 +/- 0.0342, 0.278 +/- 0.0319, 0.281 +/- 0.0324, 0.260 +/- 0.0310. The averaged OD values of EGF group and NGF group were separately 0.228 +/- 0.0304, 0.245 +/- 0.0418, 0.267 +/- 0.0454, 0.275 +/- 0.0347, 0.271 +/- 0.0449, 0.250 +/- 0.0253 and 0.216 +/- 0.0187, 0.228 +/- 0.0226, 0.231 +/- 0.0225, 0.242 +/- 0.0279, 0.245 +/- 0.0294, 0.247 +/- 0.0349. CONCLUSION: bGFG can promote the growth of human corneal endothelial cells in a dose dependent manner while with concentration lower than 30 ng/ml. bFGF with concentration that is higher than 100 ng/ml will weaken this effect. EGF can also promote proliferation of human corneal endothelial cells demonstrating a linear dose dependent effect when its concentration is lower than 10 ng/ml and this effect decreased when its concentration was higher than 30 ng/ml. NGF showed no effect on the growth of human cornea endothelial cells in this study.