Diabetes affects more than 382 million people worldwide and can lead to vision loss as a result of progressive degeneration of the neurovascular unit in the retina, a condition known as diabetic retinopathy (DR). Early stage DR is characterized by microangiopathies including microaneurysms, microhemorrhages, and hyperpermeability. Analyses of postmortem human retinal tissue and retinas from animal models indicate that degeneration of the pericytes, the cells that make up the outer layer of capillaries, is an early event in DR; however, the relative contribution of specific cellular components to DR pathobiology has been difficult to dissect due to the complexity of existing models.
