Resilience and neuroprotection: the efficacy of Saffron Repron and Photo-biomodulation in Retinal Degeneration

neurodegeneration. These include metabolic disorders, genetic abnormalities, and a range of environmental stresses. As the retinal neurons progressively deteriorate, several pathologies can manifest, like diabetic retinopathy, retinitis pigmentosa, age-related macular degeneration, and glaucoma. A commonality among these diverse retinal diseases is the incremental degradation of visual acuity, which, in severe cases, may escalate to complete visual impairment or blindness. Numerous researches are focusing on identifying potential therapeutic pathways for these retinal diseases. Despite their unique origins and clinical signs, these diseases invariably share underlying secondary pathophysiological mechanisms. These mechanisms, including inflammation, oxidative stress, and apoptosis, contribute significantly to disease progression. In light of this, therapeutic strategies targeting these shared secondary degenerative processes are becoming more important. Such strategies, which use the potential of natural molecular compounds and/or photobiomodulation, hold promise not only for a specific condition but also for various retinal degenerative diseases. Therefore, these interventions are critical and offer a broad-spectrum approach to ameliorating the negative impact of retinal diseases. In this thesis, we investigated the efficacy of nutraceutical and photobiomodulation therapy to slow down photoreceptor degeneration in two different retinal diseases. In experimental section 1, we studied the efficacy of a per os treatment with saffron Repron® in slowing the progression of retinitis pigmentosa in an autosomal recessive animal model (rd10). In experimental section 2, we evaluated the efficacy of a treatment with saffron derived from hydroponic culture in an in-vitro model of retinal pigmented epithelium (Arpe-19) and compared its action to that of field saffron. In experimental section 3, we studied the toxicity of a photobiomodulation treatment and its possible application and efficacy in an ex-vivo model of light damage.