Jason Miller
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss in the developed world, and its dry form has no approved treatment. AMD stems from failure of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a cell layer that supports the light-sensing photoreceptors.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biochemistry
Physiology
- Topics
age-related macular degeneration
dry AMD
retinal pigment epithelium
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Determine the composition of lipid droplets, small fat-storage compartments, in human retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cultures fed different lipid loads, using mass spectrometry.
- Test whether lipid droplets protect stored fats from lipid peroxidation, a toxic oxidative damage, in primary and iPSC-derived human RPE cells.
- Track whether fats released from lipid droplets by specific enzymes are burned in mitochondria rather than secreted, using microscopy, radiolabeled lipid tracing, bioenergetic profiling and lipidomics.
More about the research
Each day the RPE takes in a large amount of fat. Some arrives as lipoprotein particles from the blood vessel layer behind it, and some comes from eating the lipid-rich tips of photoreceptors. In AMD, this fat handling goes wrong. Fat deposits build up outside the cells, mitochondria burn fat poorly, and lipid peroxidation, a toxic oxidative damage to fats, increases.
Why it matters
Dry age-related macular degeneration currently has no FDA-approved treatment and causes irreversible vision loss in many older adults. Identifying pathways inside RPE cells that boost fat burning and limit harmful fat deposits could open new therapeutic avenues to preserve RPE health and vision in people with dry AMD.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jianhai Du
West Virginia University, WV·Biochemistry
Trace how retinal pigment epithelium cells use the amino acid proline as fuel alongside glucose, using tracer methods and mass spectrometry.
Joshua Dunaief
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Develop two new mouse models of geographic atrophy driven by oxidative stress in the retinal pigment epithelium: mice with RPE-specific knockout of glutathione peroxidase 4 and mice given low-dose sodium iodate.
Dwight Stambolian
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Genetics
Differentiate eight patient-derived iPSC lines into retinal pigment epithelium, four with CFH risk alleles and four gene-corrected isogenic controls, and quantify mRNA, protein and function of complement components, regulators and receptors.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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