Douglas Dean
University of Louisville, KY·Physiology
Photoreceptors, the light-sensing cells of the eye, run largely on glucose. The glucose reaches them from the choroid, a layer of blood vessels behind the retina.
- Fields
Physiology
Biochemistry
Neuroscience
- Topics
retina
photoreceptors
choroid
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2030
What they work on
- 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.
- Determine how new blood vessel sprouts from the choroid, which bypass the RPE and leak metabolites, change metabolism in the retina and RPE during injury and disease.
- Investigate how the mesenchymal-driving transcription factor ZEB1 and the related cell-state shift guide endothelial tip cells and macrophages during new vessel growth, using lineage tracing and cell-specific knockouts.
More about the research
It passes through the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a cell layer that acts as the barrier between the blood and the outer retina. The RPE also shuttles other metabolites back and forth and converts compounds from the blood into nutrients for photoreceptors. This suggests that the RPE and the choroid's blood vessels work together as one metabolic unit. Diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP, an inherited loss of photoreceptors) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) are linked to metabolic changes, so understanding this unit could explain how vision is lost.
Why it matters
Retinitis pigmentosa and AMD are linked to metabolic changes in photoreceptors and the RPE, and abnormal new blood vessels contribute to retinal damage. Mapping how nutrients move among the choroid, RPE and photoreceptors in living eyes could reveal metabolic pathways and vessel-growth signals, such as ZEB1, that could become targets for slowing vision loss.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nancy Philp
Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Neuroscience
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.
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.
Jason Miller
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Determine the composition of lipid droplets, small fat-storage compartments, in human retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cultures fed different lipid loads, using mass spectrometry.
The school
University of Louisville: 15 labs on PI Pages, $225M a year on research, 159 research doctorates a year.
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