Caveolin-1 regulates human trabecular meshwork cell adhesion, endocytosis, and autophagy

Impaired trabecular meshwork (TM) outflow is implicated in the pathogenesis of primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). We previously identified the association of a caveolin-1 (CAV1) variant with POAG by genome-wide association study. Here we report a study of CAV1 knockout (KO) effect on human TM cell properties. We generated human CAV1-KO TM cells by CRISPR/Cas9 technology, and we found that the CAV1-KO TM cells less adhered to the surface coating than the wildtype TM cells by 69.34% ( P < 0.05), but showed no difference in apoptosis. Higher endocytosis ability of dextran and transferrin was also observed in the CAV1-KO TM cells (4.37 and 1.89-fold respectively, P < 0.001), compared to the wildtype TM cells. Moreover, the CAV1-KO TM cells had higher expression of extracellular matrix-degrading enzyme genes ( ADMTS13 and MMP14) as well as autophagy-related genes ( ATG7 and BECN1) and protein (LC3B-II) than the wildtype TM cells. In summary, results from this study showed that the CAV1-KO TM cells have reduced adhesion with higher extracellular matrix-degrading enzyme expression, but increased endocytosis and autophagy activities, indicating that CAV1 could be involved in the regulation of adhesion, endocytosis, and autophagy in human TM cells.