Catherine Bowes Rickman, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Ophthalmology

Department:
Ophthalmology

Division:
Ophthalmology - Research

Email:
bowes007dukeedu

Mailing Address:
Box 3802, DUMC
Durham, NC 27710

Telephone:
919-668-0648

Training:
Ph.D., University of California at Los Angeles

Last Updated:
October 15, 2007

Research Interests:
AMD is a late-onset, progressive, neurodegenerative disease with devastating impact on the elderly. This disease occurs primarily in people over the age of 65 years and accounts for approximately 50% of registered blindness in Western Europe and North America. AMD develops as either dry (atrophic) or wet (exudative). The pathogenesis of AMD is clearly multifactorial with genetic and environmental factors including aging, smoking, diet, gender, oxidative stress, and inflammation playing roles in onset and progression. Our research program focuses on development and studies of animal models of AMD, AMD pathogenesis and pre-clinical studies of novel therapies.

A mouse model for macular degeneration: Human APOE isoform knock-in Mice.
We developed a murine model of AMD by combining three of the risk factors for AMD: advanced age, apolipoprotein E isoform expression and exposure to a high-fat, high-cholesterol (HF-C) diet. The model recapitulates not only choroidal neovascularization (CNV) but also many of the RPE hallmarks of clinical AMD, which is unique in the field. Importantly, these changes require the presence of all three risk factors. This animal model of spontaneously-occurring CNV is also the first to incorporate physiologically-relevant risk factors of human disease. Using this model, both the mechanisms of pathology and therapeutic approaches for AMD are being studied.

Studies of this model are showing that lipid transport dysregulation, inflammation 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.

Publications:
2007 -- Pubmed # 17673310 -- Yu L, Kelly U, Ebright JN, Malek G, Saloupis P, Rickman DW, McKay BS, Arshavsky VY, Bowes Rickman C. Oxidative stress-induced expression and modulation of Phosphatase of Regenerating Liver-1 (PRL-1) in mammalian retina. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2007 Sep;1773(9):1473-82.

2007 -- Pubmed # 17888483 -- Ding JD, Lin J, Mace BE, Herrmann R, Sullivan P, Bowes Rickman C. Targeting age-related macular degeneration with Alzheimer's disease based immunotherapies: Anti-amyloid-beta antibody attenuates pathologies in an age-related macular degeneration mouse model. Vision Res. 2007 Sep 19.

2006 -- Pubmed # 16723438 -- Bowes Rickman C, Ebright JN, Zavodni ZJ, Yu L, Wang T, Daiger SP, Wistow G, Boon K, Hauser MA. Defining the Human Macula Transcriptome and Candidate Retinal Disease Genes Using EyeSAGE.  Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci.  2006 Jun;47(6):2305-16.

2006 -- Pubmed # 16936083 -- Bowne SJ, Liu Q, Sullivan LS, Zhu J, Spellicy CJ, Rickman CB, Pierce EA, Daiger SP. Why do mutations in the ubiquitously expressed housekeeping gene IMPDH1 cause retina-specific photoreceptor degeneration? Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2006 Sep;47(9):3754-65.

2006 -- Pubmed # 17249563 -- Malek G, Mace B, Saloupis P, Schmechel D, Rickman D, Sullivan P, Rickman CB. Initial observations of key features of age-related macular degeneration in APOE targeted replacement mice. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2006;572:109-17.

2005 -- Pubmed # 15851579 -- Yang P, Wiser JL, Peairs JJ, Ebright JN, Zavodni ZJ, Bowes Rickman C, Jaffe GJ. Human RPE expression of cell survival factors. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2005 May;46(5):1755-64.

2005 -- Pubmed # 16079201 -- Malek G, Johnson LV, Mace BE, Saloupis P, Schmechel DE, Rickman DW, Toth CA, Sullivan PM, Bowes Rickman C. Apolipoprotein E allele-dependent pathogenesis: A model for age-related retinal degeneration.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.  2005 Aug 3.

2005 -- Pubmed # 16009834 -- Cahill MT, Mruthyunjaya P, Bowes Rickman C, Toth CA. Recurrence of retinal pigment epithelial changes after macular translocation with 360 degrees peripheral retinectomy for geographic atrophy. Arch Ophthalmol. 2005 Jul;123(7):935-8.

2005 -- Pubmed # 16188231 -- Rosenthal R, Malek G, Salomon N, Peill-Meininghaus M, Coeppicus L, Wohlleben H, Wimmers S, Bowes Rickman C, Strauss O. The fibroblast growth factor receptors, FGFR-1 and FGFR-2, mediate two independent signalling pathways in human retinal pigment epithelial cells. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2005 Nov 11;337(1):241-7.

1996 -- Pubmed # 8901622 -- Rickman DW, Rickman CB. Suppression of trkB expression by antisense oligonucleotides alters a neuronal phenotype in the rod pathway of the developing rat retina.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.  1996 Oct 29;93(22):12564-9.

1993 -- Pubmed # 8385352 -- Bowes C, Li T, Frankel WN, Danciger M, Coffin JM, Applebury ML, Farber DB. Localization of a retroviral element within the rd gene coding for the beta subunit of cGMP phosphodiesterase. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1993 Apr 1;90(7):2955-9.

1990 -- Pubmed # 1977087 -- Bowes C, Li T, Danciger M, Baxter LC, Applebury ML, Farber DB. Retinal degeneration in the rd mouse is caused by a defect in the beta subunit of rod cGMP-phosphodiesterase. Nature. 1990 Oct 18;347(6294):677-80.

1989 -- Pubmed # 2481314 -- Bowes C, Danciger M, Kozak CA, Farber DB. Isolation of a candidate cDNA for the gene causing retinal degeneration in the rd mouse. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1989 Dec;86(24):9722-6.