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$1.8 million grant to help study cause of AMD
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The National Eye Institute has awarded the University of California, Davis, a 3-year $1.8 million grant to further study of the cellular changes that cause age-related macular degeneration, according to a news release.
The funding will allow the UC Davis Eye Center to study how the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is affected by changes that alter gene expression while leaving the original genome sequence intact, the release said.
Larry Hjelmeland, PhD, UC Davis professor of ophthalmology and principal investigator on the grant, and Zeljka Smit-McBride, PhD, co-principal investigator on the grant and an associate project scientist with the UC Davis Eye Center, will test how aging in mice alters RPE gene expression. They will test using demethylation, a process by which methyl groups are removed from DNA, resulting in altered gene expression, according to the release.
Similar efforts have led to cancer treatments, the release noted, and the UC Davis team is hoping to use what was learned to help further understanding of AMD.
"This disease does not appear until between the ages of 55 and 60, and the prevalence grows dramatically with chronological age," Dr. Hjelmeland said in the release. "We want to know the biochemical changes in retinal cells that occur with aging and increase the susceptibility for this disease."