Raghu Krishnamoorthy
University of North Texas Health Science Center, TX·Pharmacology
Glaucoma damages the optic nerve and kills retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), the nerve cells that carry visual signals from the eye to the brain. Lowering pressure inside the eye is the main treatment, but some patients keep losing vision even when their pressure is tightly controlled.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Neuroscience
Biology
- Topics
glaucoma
neurodegeneration
neuroprotection
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Determine whether endothelin-1 (ET-1), a blood-vessel-tightening protein, acts through its ETA and ETB receptors to reduce mitophagy, the removal of damaged mitochondria, in retinal ganglion cells.
- Uncover the mechanisms that reduce mitophagy in retinal ganglion cells after eye pressure is raised in rodents, including Brown Norway rats, using super-resolution and two-photon confocal microscopy.
- Define the mitochondrial mechanisms behind the nerve-protecting effects of endothelin receptor blockers, including the FDA-approved drug macitentan, in rats with elevated eye pressure.
More about the research
A treatment that protects these nerve cells directly is needed. One suspected culprit is endothelin-1 (ET-1), a small protein that tightens blood vessels and also acts directly on cells. It signals through two receptors, ETA and ETB, and both ET-1 and its receptors increase in animal models of glaucoma.
Why it matters
Some glaucoma patients continue to lose vision despite aggressive pressure-lowering treatment. By showing how endothelin receptors damage retinal nerve cells and testing whether blocking them protects these cells, this work could support repurposing macitentan, an already FDA-approved drug, as a neuroprotective treatment to slow vision loss in glaucoma.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Suchismita Acharya
University of North Texas Health Science Center, TX·Pharmacology
Optimize the dose of SA-2 nanoparticles through toxicokinetic studies, which track drug levels and safety, and test how well they lower eye pressure in mice with Ad5.TGFβ2-induced ocular hypertension and in normal monkey eyes.
Karsten Gronert
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Neuroscience
Define which retinal cells make and respond to prostaglandin D2 (PGD2), a fat-derived signaling molecule, in healthy retina and how raised eye pressure (ocular hypertension) shuts this pathway down.
Nimesh Patel
University of Houston, TX·Neuroscience
Test whether baseline retinal vascular volume and blood-flow variability, measured with OCTA (a 3D blood-flow scan), predict the rate of disease progression in non-human primates with experimental glaucoma.
The school
University of North Texas Health Science Center: 4 labs on PI Pages, $110M a year on research, 16 research doctorates a year.
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