RPE biologist and physician scientist studying the pathogenesis of dry macular degeneration. Passionate about mentorship, science, patients, and family.
Kellogg Eye Center, UofMich.
Joined August 2021
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I'm grateful beyond words for the opportunity Mr. Grosfeld has provided to advance dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) research at @UMKelloggEye. I look forward to directing this initiative and welcome new ideas for tackling this devastating disease. #maculardegeneration
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Celebrating Erin Trombly's (right) full journey through Miller lab - from undergrad to research technician to medical school acceptance. Kaitlyn Digbsy (center), senior grad student, was her mentor throughout. The lab suggested this awkward mentor to mentor to mentee pose!
Postdoc extraordinaire John Han had a check-in meeting with me last week in which he dropped a huge pile of exciting data in my lap, including cool findings linking RPE metabolism to deposits. This pic doesn't do justice to my giddiness. Science=hard but cool findings=exhirating.
This absolutely shocking graph underscores how much high profile publishing is on an unsustainable path. This can't keep going on this trend if any researcher wants to survive without complete burnout and exhaustion.
When I sent our senior graduate student Kaitlyn a Jason-esque tome of ideas to consider for a paper she is writing via SLACK, here was her pithy response.
Science funding was insanely rough this year, and it was easy to fall into a trap of being demoralized. But the teamwork and can-do spirit of our lab really did lift me. Read about these awesome characters of the Miller lab: tinyurl.com/2fyf45t8
A clinical🧵. Starting checkpoint inhibitor therapy for cancer can result in double-whammy, where cancer-associated retinopathy accelerates as the checkpoint inhibitor unleashes already primed immune response. In this case, hand motion vision in both eyes after a few weeks. 1/3
More ONL remained than you'd expect with hand motion vision, so we postulated some antibody-mediated photoreceptor dysfunction rather than photoreceptor death accounted for decreased vision, akin to the mechanism for autoimmune encephalitis. 2/3
So we treated with plasma exchange to remove culprit antibodies, and ellipsoid zone recovered as did vision (to a degree) after 3 months of treatment - to 20/60 in each eye. 3/3 tinyurl.com/42sne5kk
I appear to have forgotten the memo to not wear salmon pants to Retina Society meeting this past month. With part of the @UMKelloggEye contingent plus alumni. – at Genoa, MI
Overheard at #RD2025 meeting and @_BrightFocus sponsored #AMDMacularFastTrack as career advice by Rob Mullins: "Basic scientists, please talk to clinicians. Clinicians, please talk to basic scientists. Physician-scientists, you probably already talk to yourselves." FACT! – at Prague, Czech Republic
I learned a lot participating in the upcoming chapter in Ryan's Retina 8th edition about mitochondrial DNA mutations and retinal degeneration. Thanks to Deborah Ferrington and Peng Shang @DohenyEye and John Han, post-doc in our lab, for collaborative co-authorship.
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Thankful that graduate students are talking about the sheer feeling of doom and chaos that exists in American science right now. A large part of America's innovation can be traced to education and research from our universities and that is being wiped away. – at Ann Arbor, MI
I became a scientist, but I don’t know if my career will exist in five years | Opinion sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/art…
A piece of great news. We will look for small molecule inducers of RPE autophagy that do not directly inhibit mTOR as a therapeutic for dry AMD (mTOR inhibition is not great for RPE health). And then study better ways to get inducers to the RPE in vivo.
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At the Ryan Initiative for Macular Research (RIMR - rimr.doheny.org/), we discussed whether AMD is one or multiple diseases. TLDR: There are key subtypes, but they blend into each other and we need more sophisticated analysis to better distinguish. tinyurl.com/3dwb27se
We sought a better marker of basal polarized secretion in the RPE, compared to VEGF (low abundance) and TIMP3 (multiple bands on WB). With some bioinformatics on existing datasets, we found IGFBP5! Highly expressed, highly polarized to basal side. tinyurl.com/mvxue2vy
Thanks to @RPB_org [bit.ly/RPBgrant] for a career development award to study the cross-talk between mitochondria and peroxisomes in handling lipids in the RPE, and ways to harness peroxisomal capacity as a therapeutic for AMD.
My social media early vote-by-mail sticker. Thought this was a cool design, all the cool local Ann Arbor attractions.
Thanks to Hurley lab and @DanielH155 for allowing us to participate in this project (jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(2…). If you push RPE to degrade lipids in the mitochondria, it may secrete less drusen-promoting components, a novel strategy for treating intermediate AMD.
I have a new paper (accepted but not yet proofed) and that feels good! Simply put, it's about a potential pharmacological agent that could help people handle drusen in age related macular degeneration! jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(2…
Tips and tricks for measuring oxygen consumption rates (OCR) for weeks on end while your cells are happily surviving in incubator. A 🧵on our paper just published providing extensive hints to improve reliability of Resipher device to monitor OCR app.jove.com/t/67038 . 1/6
Another interesting discovery: mitochondrial uncoupler BAM15 is much more robust and completely non-toxic, compared to FCCP. Putting BAM15 on RPE cultures induces adaptation, resulting in higher OCR even after BAM15 is washed off. We will only use BAM15 going forward. 5/6
Collaboration with Richard Bryan and Kin Lo @lucidsci, Daisy Shu (@EyeDaisyShu), Leo Kim (@leomdphd), and multiple members of our lab. 6/6