Nancy Philp
Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Neuroscience
The retina's light-sensing cells, called photoreceptors, use energy at a very high rate, and glucose is their main fuel. A growing body of evidence links a shortage of glucose to blinding diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biochemistry
Physiology
- Topics
retina
glucose transport
Slc2a1
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2030
What they work on
- Test whether the retinal pigment epithelium keeps some glucose for its own biosynthetic and phagocytic activities, using RPE-iΔGlut1 mice that lack the glucose transporter GLUT1 in the RPE.
- Determine whether glucose transported across the outer blood-retinal barrier, rather than the inner retinal vessels, is required to maintain rod and cone structure and function.
- Define how deleting GLUT1 from adult rods in Rod-iΔGlut1 mice affects rod structure, function, viability and metabolism, using multi-omics analysis.
- Determine whether glucose deprivation in rods mimics changes in the aged retina, and how rod metabolic failure affects cone survival.
More about the research
It is widely assumed that the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a support layer behind the retina, passes glucose from the blood to the photoreceptors and saves it for them. No study has directly tested this. This project asks how glucose and lactate, a product of glucose use, keep photoreceptors healthy.
Why it matters
Glucose shortage contributes to retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration, both causes of vision loss. Learning how GLUT1-mediated glucose transport supports the RPE and photoreceptors could point to new treatment strategies that protect sight in patients with these retinal degenerative diseases.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Douglas Dean
University of Louisville, KY·Physiology
Characterize newly identified metabolic pathways that pass nutrients both ways between the RPE barrier layer and photoreceptors, by delivering labeled metabolites in living pigs and using artery-to-vein mass spectrometry.
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.
Tylor Lewis
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Neuroscience·Early-career
Comprehensively characterize retinal degeneration in global ADAM9 knockout mice, focusing on the interface between photoreceptor outer segments and the retinal pigment epithelium.
The school
Thomas Jefferson University: 12 labs on PI Pages, $271M a year on research, 33 research doctorates a year.
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