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Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of legal blindness in the elderly in developed countries, and is a leading cause of blindness worldwide.  The typical American diet is low in nutritional factors that may reduce the risk or severity of AMD. The goal of this project is to determine whether being deprived of these nutrients has consequences for the development of AMD, and to determine the mechanisms by which this occurs. Results from these studies will provide direct evidence for the importance of these nutritional factors in maintaining retinal health and preventing advanced retinal disease, and may reveal new options for therapeutic intervention.

Our work is designed to investigate the role of certain peptides, both alone and in combination, as direct causes of chronic brain cell death. We will accomplish this by using a simplified genetically controlled model organism. We also believe that our preliminary observations indicate a new cellular pathway that may be responsible for Alzheimer's related cell death. We will thus try and prove this hypothesis using genetic and drug based experimental strategies in our model system.

The goal of the project is to decipher if the overexpression of Abca1 in glia would exert neuroprotection and decrease tau pathology in the P301S/ApoE4 mouse model of tauopathy and Alzheimer`s disease