TNF and Schnyder corneal dystrophy: As inflammation plays a key role in the pathophysiology of SCD (Hoppe, 2014) and is potentiated by RAGE activation (Goldin et al., 2006), we assessed protein expression of a key inflammatory molecule, i.e., NF-κBp65, and one of its target genes (i.e., TNF-α) at the mRNA level (Figure 3, Table 1).