Shahid Husain
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Pharmacology
Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness worldwide. It slowly kills retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), the neurons that send visual information from the eye to the brain.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Neuroscience
Genetics
- Topics
glaucoma
retinal ganglion cells
neuroprotection
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Determine how class I and IIb histone deacetylases (HDACs), enzymes that tighten DNA packaging, contribute to retinal ganglion cell death in rats with ocular hypertension (high eye pressure).
- Test whether activating the δ-opioid receptor, for example with SNC-121, raises histone acetylation in a way that protects retinal ganglion cells.
- Determine the role of DNA methylation, a gene-silencing chemical mark, in δ-opioid-mediated protection of retinal ganglion cells in ocular hypertensive animals.
More about the research
No clinical treatment can yet rescue these cells. This project asks whether drugs acting on opioid receptors protect RGCs by changing the epigenome. The epigenome is the set of chemical marks that switch genes on or off without altering the DNA sequence.
Why it matters
Glaucoma patients currently have no treatment that directly saves the retinal neurons whose loss causes blindness. By explaining how opioid receptor activation protects these cells through epigenetic changes, this work could identify new drug targets for neuroprotective glaucoma therapy. Such therapy would complement existing treatments that only lower eye pressure.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
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.
Raghu Krishnamoorthy
University of North Texas Health Science Center, TX·Pharmacology
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.
The school
Medical University of South Carolina: 19 labs on PI Pages, $321M a year on research, 271 research doctorates a year.
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