Uncovering Immune-Related Factors Driving Retinal Pigment Epithelium Repair

This project aims to gain a detailed understanding of tissue repair in a lab model, with results that can inform repair strategies in age-related macular degeneration.

The human eye has a limited ability to repair damage to the retinal pigment epithelium, which is affected by age-related macular degeneration. To uncover potential pathways to co-opt tissues for repair, Lyndsay Leach, PhD, and her colleagues will work with zebrafish, a lab model known for robust capabilities in tissue repair. They expect the work to uncover novel factors in regenerating retinal pigment epithelium that, in turn, represent candidates for treating or even reversing tissue loss.

For these studies, Dr. Leach and her colleagues will use the lab model to examine how the immune response affects retinal pigment epithelium repair. With this model as a tool for exploring chronic damage to this tissue, the group will uncover molecules that can guide the search for treatments. The team expects the work to expand understanding of these damage and repair processes. Their overarching goal is to identify promising targets for developing therapies against retinal pigment epithelium injury and diseases.

Unlike humans and other mammals, zebrafish have the distinct ability to regenerate many tissue types after injury. This proposal utilizes a unique zebrafish model able to sustain targeted damage only to the RPE, with subsequent tissue regeneration. Thus, this model enables not only examination of RPE reparative processes but is a potentially useful tool in which to study RPE degenerative disease.

Successful completion of this study will pinpoint specific RPE pro-regenerative factors and determine which have the potential to influence human RPE tissue repair. The overarching hope is to identify promising targets for future RPE injury and disease therapies. Additionally, due largely to the uniqueness of the zebrafish RPE injury model used here, the completion of this study will broaden what is known about RPE damage and repair mechanisms.