WHAT WE DO

The primary focus of the Miller Laboratory is to understand disease mechanisms and develop treatments for dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in the developed world. Our AMD studies are focused on the biology of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), an epithelial monolayer underneath the retina which provides myriad support functions to photoreceptors. Dry AMD is fundamentally an age-related degeneration of the RPE, accompanied by formation of pathologic extracellular lipid-rich deposits termed drusen and reticular pseudodrusen (RPD) below and above the RPE, respectively. We utilize primary and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) RPE from humans to study the lipid biology and metabolism of the RPE, with the goal of therapeutically preventing drusen and RPD accumulation.