NEWS
NEWS
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The Miller lab is pretty brand new into peroxisomes, and postdoc John Han has fearlessly started the endeavor, but now new graduate student Abby Gillingham is going all-in on this organelle. She will be exploring the links between peroxisomes and mitochondria in dealing with the RPE's lipid load. And to jump-start her exploration of peroxisomes, and get more foundational knowledge for the naive Miller lab, she will be attending (and received a travel award!) for the EMBO peroxisome meeting in Spain in fall 2025.
The RD 2025 meeting is a cozy gathering of researchers in the fields of inherited retinal degeneration and dry macular degeneration that assembles every other year. This is the first travel award to the meeting for both John and Jason. They will be talking on the roles of branched chain amino acids, lipid droplets, and peroxisomes in helping the RPE decide what lipids it should degrade and which lipids may get secreted and deposited as drusen in AMD.
3/16/25: Kaitlyn gives another spectacular talk!
3/16/25: Kaitlyn gives another spectacular talk!
Exceptionally smooth and polished in her presentation style (plus she makes things very accessible to non-vision-scientists), Kaitlyn gave a talk to her home department, Pharmacology, this past week. Well received by all.
3/5/25: Abby Gillingham joins the lab.
3/5/25: Abby Gillingham joins the lab.
Abby is a graduate student in Molecular and Integrative Physiology who has a passion for teaching and a collection of funny and provocative t-shirts that is bound to keep anyone's interest! We are excited she has decided to join the lab. She will be working on peroxisomal biology in AMD with John Han. Second project TBD. Today, she gave us her end of rotation lab meeting and we celebrated with our traditional Dimo's donuts, including that paczki Qitao is holding up. Not pictured is Gillian, who is on maternity leave with munchkin #1!
3/3/25: Miller Lab receives Thome Award to study RPE autophagy induction as a therapeutic strategy for dry AMD.
3/3/25: Miller Lab receives Thome Award to study RPE autophagy induction as a therapeutic strategy for dry AMD.
Wonderful news we received from the Edward N. and Della L. Thome Memorial Foundation. We will utilize the funding from their translational AMD award to discover small molecule inducers of RPE autophagy that do not directly inhibit mTOR (mTOR inhibition, the classic way to induce autophagy, has toxic effects on the RPE). Such autophagy induction without direct mTOR inhibition has multiple routes for being therapeutic in dry AMD. With the small molecules we identify, we will explore various encapsulation technologies and delivery routes to improve availability of such small molecules to the RPE in vivo.
12/11/24: Nathalie Tsimhoni wins best poster award at Pioneer Symposium.
12/11/24: Nathalie Tsimhoni wins best poster award at Pioneer Symposium.
A hearty congrats to Nathalie Tsimhoni, one of our dynamic undergraduate superstar crew in the Miller lab. She put together a poster for the University of Michigan Pioneer Symposium, an amazing training program geared towards talented post-docs at the university, and won a best poster award! Nathalie is being spectacularly mentored by Miller lab post-doc and Pioneer awardee, John Han. Nathalie and John are working on understanding how lactate facilitates decreased glucose consumption by the RPE. That reduced glucose consumption is thought to be critical for outer retinal health, as glucose can then pass from the choroid to the photoreceptors, where it is the preferred metabolic substrate, without the RPE "stealing" this glucose.
12/5/24: Lab receives Research to Prevent Blindness award.
12/5/24: Lab receives Research to Prevent Blindness award.
We are sincerely grateful to Research to Prevent Blindness for a career development award to study the links between the mitochondria and peroxisome during RPE lipid metabolism. We think that as mitochondrial dysfunction progresses in the RPE of patients with AMD, the peroxisome may be able to "take over" and handle degradation of lipids the mitochondria would normally deal with. This, in turn, may protect the RPE from aberrant lipid metabolism that characterizes AMD. If this peroxisomal adaptation in the face of RPE mitochondrial dysfunction exists, then we hope to augment peroxisomal function in the RPE as a therapeutic approach to AMD.
12/5/24: Kecia Feathers promotoed.
12/5/24: Kecia Feathers promotoed.
While new to the Miller lab, Kecia has been part of Kellogg Eye Center Research for more than 20 years! Congrats on this well-deserved promotion to Lab Specialist Senior. May you continue to be the biochemistry queen that you are - currently working on density ultracentrifugation and TLC.
11/29/24: Graduate student Kaitlyn Digsby receives VRSF award!
11/29/24: Graduate student Kaitlyn Digsby receives VRSF award!
Congratulations to Kaitlyn Digsby for receiving the Vitreoretinal Surgery Foundation (VRSF) Fellowship award. With this award, she will study how hypoxia regulates apoE secretion which, in turn, is important for extracellular deposit formation in AMD.
10/24/24: Lab early senior citizen dinner, Kaitlyn's idea, John's location pick
10/24/24: Lab early senior citizen dinner, Kaitlyn's idea, John's location pick
5:00 pm start time. According to Gillian, this is not senior citizen territory, but rather an enjoyable time to start dinner for anyone.
10/3/24: Miller lab welcomes new graduate and undergraduate rotation students
10/3/24: Miller lab welcomes new graduate and undergraduate rotation students
Ruozhu Yang, Erin Trombly, and Nathalie Tsimhoni have all joined in the past month or so. Check out their profiles on our "people" page.
9/5/24: Co-lab manager Gillian Gulette promoted!
9/5/24: Co-lab manager Gillian Gulette promoted!
Hard to believe this phenom started just a few year ago in the lab. Gillian has wowed us all with her can-do spirit, sensational capacity to stay organized, ability to learn any and all new methods, and, in this past year, her first first author paper! Congrats to Gillian on the promotion and, more importantly, developing into such a talented scientist.
5/9/24: Miller lab presents at ARVO
5/9/24: Miller lab presents at ARVO
John presented his initial work on manipulating lipid droplet formation in the RPE to better understand the role of lipid droplets in AMD-relevant processes. Kaitlyn is starting to understand the fundamental mechanisms of apoE regulation and trafficking in the RPE (amazingly, this hasn't really been explored in the RPE, despite the ubiquity of this apolipoprotein in drusen and subretinal drusenoid deposits). Jason presented our initial experience with Resipher, a device that allows us to measure mitochondrial health via continuous oxygen consumption rate readings while cells are in a regular incubator on standard cell culture plates in standard media, all over a period of days to weeks and all while RPE is well polarized and differentiated.
4/8/24: Simultaneous great lab news
4/8/24: Simultaneous great lab news
Kaitlyn passes her qualifying exam with flying colors.
John is awarded a BrightFocus post-doctoral fellowship award.
Kaitlyn was required to propose a project completely outside of her dissertation work and did so with skill and ease (even if there was stress along the way).
John's proposal to BrightFocus will help elucidate lipid droplet biology in the RPE and how manipulating lipid droplets may be a target for AMD. We are thankful for this support from BrightFocus!
At ARVO, John received an award from BrightFocus for his proposal, and he proceeded to carry the award around with him during all aspects of ARVO, with Kaitlyn assembling the following amazing powerpoint. Needless to say, John is excited about the award.
2/18/24: Eversight (EyeBank) grant to study RPE lipoprotein particles
2/18/24: Eversight (EyeBank) grant to study RPE lipoprotein particles
We are thankful to Eversight for a grant to study RPE lipoprotein secretion. We think better understanding what the RPE secretes will provide insight into how to prevent the pathologic drusen and reticular pseudodrusen deposits that occur in AMD.
2/4/24: Kaitlyn gets Rackham graduate school grant
2/4/24: Kaitlyn gets Rackham graduate school grant
For her thesis work on apolipoprotein E (apoE) trafficking in the RPE, Kaitlyn Digsby has received a grant from the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. Congrats to Kaitlyn! Now, onwards and hopefully mostly upwards with her preliminary exam.
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