Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Cell Biology

Education

University of California Los Angeles, PhD

Phone

919.668.0648

Fax

919.684.3687

Email

bowes007@duke.edu

Website

www.duke.edu/~bowes007/

Research Interests

Catherine Bowes Rickman, PhD, leads a research program focused on animal models of Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). AMD is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss in the sixty-five-and-older population, and the devastating impact of its socioeconomic burden cannot be overstated. Recently, we have established a mouse model of the disease that faithfully recapitulates the pathology of human AMD. Our animal model of spontaneously occurring choroidal neovascularization is the first to incorporate physiologically-relevant risk factors of human disease and to manifest the full spectrum of AMD-associated retinal pathologies with variable disease penetrance (Malek et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 2005). Studies of this model are showing that lipid transport dysregulation and amyloid deposition contribute to the pathogenesis of the retinal changes observed. This, in turn, has led to identification of novel therapeutic targets for AMD that are we are currently analyzing. In fact, our most recent work shows that therapies targeting amyloid can preserve retinal function in these mice. Validation of these therapeutic targets in AMD could lead to a fundamental paradigm shift in the understanding and treatment of AMD.

Representative Publications

1. Yu L, Kelly U, Ebright JN, Malek G, Saloupis P, Rickman DW, McKay BS, Arshavsky V, Bowes Rickman C. Oxidative Stress-Induced Expression and Modulation of Phosphatase of Regenerating Liver-1 (PRL-1) in Mammalian Retina. BBA Mol. Cell. Res. 2007, 1773 (9); 1473-1482.
2. Malek G, Jamison, JA, Mace B, Sullivan P, Bowes Rickman C. ERG Responses and Microarray Analysis of Gene Expression in a Multifactorial Murine Model of Age-related Retinal Degeneration Adv Exp Med Biol. 2007 in press.
3. Baer C, Bowes Rickman C, Srivastava S, Malek G, Stinnett S, Toth CA. Recurrent Choroidal Neovascularization After Macular Translocation Surgery With 360-Degree Peripheral Retinectomy. Retina 2007 in press.
4. Ding J-D, Lin J, Mace BE, Herrmann R, Sullivan P, Bowes Rickman C. Targeting Age-related Macular Degeneration With Alzheimer's Disease Based Immunotherapies: Anti-Amyloid-b Antibody Attenuates Pathologies in an Age-related Macular Degeneration Mouse Model. Vis. Res. 2007 in press.
5. Malek G, Mace B, Saloupis P, Schmechel D, Rickman D, Sullivan P, Bowes Rickman C. Initial Observations of Key Features of Age-related Macular Degeneration in APOE Targeted Replacement Mice. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2006; 572: 109-117. 
6. Bowes Rickman C., Ebright JN, Zavodni ZJ, Yu L, Wang T, Daiger SP, Wistow G, Boon K and Hauser MA. Defining the Human Macula Transcriptome and Candidate Retinal Disease Genes using EyeSAGE. Invest. Ophthal. Vis. Sci. 2006; 47(6): 2305-2316. 
7. Malek G, Johnson L, Mace BE, Saloupis, P, Schmechel DE, Rickman D, Toth CA, Sullivan PM, Bowes Rickman C. Apolipoprotein E alleledependent pathogenesis: A model for age-related retinal degeneration. Proc, Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 2005, 102 (33) 11900-11905. 
8. Yang P, Wiser J, Peairs JJ, Ebright JN, Zavodni Z, Bowes Rickman C, Jaffe G. Human RPE Cell Survival Factor Expression. Invest. Ophthal. Vis. Sci. 2005, 46 (5): 1755-64. 
9. Cahill MT, Mruthyunjaya P, Bowes Rickman C, Toth C. Recurrence of Retinal Pigment Epithelial Changes After Macular Translocation with 360 degree Peripheral Retinectomy for Geographic Atrophy. Arch. Ophthalmol. 2005, 123, 935-938.