Stem Cells and the Retina

How do a couple of universally expressed proteins in stem cells and developing embryos influence an individual cell’s ultimate fate—whether it becomes, for example, a retinal cell, a heart muscle cell or a stomach lining cell?

That’s the question that Rajesh C. Rao, M.D., and his colleagues at the University of Michigan will set out to answer in a $2M, 5-year R01 grant from the NIH.

Their grant will explore a signaling pathway they recently discovered that involves WDR5, MAX, and p53 (proteins that help turn genes on and off). These proteins control how stem cells turn on genes to become retinal cells while at the same time turn off genes that coax stem cells to become other nonretinal cells.

“This work will help us better understand how stem cells become retinal cells,” says Dr. Rao. “This will have implications in more efficiently generating retinal cells from stem cells for uses in cell transplants in age-related macular degeneration and other diseases in which their own retinal cells die.”