Cancer-associated retinopathy (CAR) is an ocular manifestation of a paraneoplastic syndrome whereby immunological reactions toward recoverin, a retina-specific calcium binding protein, and other retinal antigens aberrantly expressed in tumor cells are elicited.
Autoantibodies against recoverin are found in the sera of patients with cancer-associated retinopathy syndrome, a paraneoplastic disease associated with retinal degeneration.
Our results support the hypothesis that, in cancer-associated retinopathy (CAR) patients, auto-immune antibody targeting for ectopic recoverin in SCLC is initially produced and cross-reacts with the retinal protein, resulting in the retinal degeneration that occurs in CAR patients.
The mapping of recoverin to this region of human chromosome 17, which contains a number of cancer-related loci, suggests a possible mechanism by which cancer-associated retinopathy occurs in humans.