I am very excited to share our latest work from the Rothlin-Ghosh Lab! I’m grateful to my co-author Yemsratch Akalu and everyone involved.
🔬👁 Below is a 🧵 of our main findings:
In our first study, we found that the loss of Mertk alone was not sufficient for retinal degeneration. Instead, retinal degeneration manifests only when Mertk and Tyro3 are concomitantly lost.
https://t.co/yws41bp0VX
We have now shown that the early-onset retinal degeneration caused by loss of Mertk and Tyro3 is due to RPE inflammation (even before eye-opening), and not due to failed phagocytosis, as previously thought.
Moreover, inhibition of RPE inflammation with Ruxolitinib, a JAK1/2 inhibitor, mitigated the severity of the aggressive, early-onset retina degeneration phenotype observed in Mertk knock out mice.
Early-onset retinal degeneration was thought to be a direct consequence of failed MERTK-mediated phagocytosis of photoreceptor outer segments by RPE cells.