Mark E. Kleinman, MD (right), the 2008 Charles D. Kelman, MD Postdoctoral Scholar, presented at the Poster Session at the 2010 annual meeting of the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). Entitled Molecular Mapping of Toll Receptor Mediated Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cell Responses with Functional Genomics, the poster outlined findings from a study supported by the IRRF that will hopefully lead to publication.
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Members of the panel – Frank W. Pfrieger, PhD, Institute of Cellular and Integrative Neurosciences, Strasbourg; Stephen G. Young, MD, Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, University of California Los Angeles; Christine A. Curcio, PhD, Department of Ophthalmology, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Johanna M. Seddon, MD, ScM, Department of Ophthalmology, Tufts University; Ignacio R. Rodriguez, PhD, National Eye Institute, Bethesda, Maryland; James T. Handa, MD, Wilmer Institute, Johns Hopkins University with Sandra Blackwood, Executive Director, International Retinal Research Foundation.
Dr. Kleinman, University of Kentucky, Chandler Medical Center, Lexington, Kentucky, received the 2008 Kelman Award for his project, The Heterogeneous Immunovascular Effects of siRNA in the Posterior Segment. Kleinman’s research at New York University (NYU), where he received his medical education, contributed to the field of endothelial stem/progenitor cell biology and anomalous vascular growth, in particular with the enigmatic clinical presentation of proliferating infantile hemangioma, for which he was awarded the Weston Research Grant. These findings were published in a wide array of scientific journals and include a seminal first-authored manuscript on hypoxia-induced mediators of progenitor cell trafficking in infantile hemangioma in the AHA publication, Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, which featured the article on the cover of the issue.
Because of the success of a Special Interest Group (SIG) hosted by Christine Curcio, PhD, Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and funded by the IRRF at the 2009 meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), the IRRF partnered once again to provide a similar function at this year’s meeting. The SIG, “Cholesterol and lipoproteins in retinal health and age-related maculopathy: update and future directions,” was organized by James T. Handa, MD, Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute, and Dr. Curcio, and attended by approximately 300 people on May 2, 2010.
This year’s SIG was especially timely due to the April 12, 2010 publication of two Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) papers showing an
association of lipid processing genes with age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) and the April 23, 2010 publication of a PloSOne paper showing that lipids were the single largest component in drusen.
Highlighted were the unique aspects of retinal cholesterol homeostasis that are relevant to the large age-related deposition of cholesterol in Bruch’s membrane, experimental approaches and model systems for further work, and important parallel mechanisms learned from research in atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases. Ultimately, it is expected that tools and therapies devised for cardiovascular disease can be re-purposed for modulating lesion formation and clearance in ARMD patients. This strategy is dependent on a sound scientific basis that the SIG participants are in the process of providing.
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