Scholars@Duke
Catherine Bowes Rickman

Catherine Bowes Rickman

George and Geneva Boguslavsky Distinguished Professor of Eye Research
Ophthalmology, Vitreoretinal Diseases & Surgery
Box 3802 Med Ctr, Durham, NC 27710
5010 Albert Eye Research Institute, Durham, NC 27710

Featured Works

Regulation of age-related macular degeneration-like pathology by complement factor H.

Journal article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · June 9, 2015 Featured Publication Complement factor H (CFH) is a major susceptibility gene for age-related macular degeneration (AMD); however, its impact on AMD pathobiology is unresolved. Here, the role of CFH in the development of AMD pathology in vivo was interrogated by analyzing aged ... Full text Link to item Cite

Expression of human complement factor H prevents age-related macular degeneration-like retina damage and kidney abnormalities in aged Cfh knockout mice.

Journal article Am J Pathol · January 2015 Featured Publication Complement factor H (CFH) is an important regulatory protein in the alternative pathway of the complement system, and CFH polymorphisms increase the genetic risk of age-related macular degeneration dramatically. These same human CFH variants have also been ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dry age-related macular degeneration: mechanisms, therapeutic targets, and imaging.

Journal article Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci · December 13, 2013 Featured Publication Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of irreversible visual dysfunction in individuals over 65 in Western Society. Patients with AMD are classified as having early stage disease (early AMD), in which visual function is affected, or late AM ... Full text Link to item Cite

Anti-amyloid therapy protects against retinal pigmented epithelium damage and vision loss in a model of age-related macular degeneration.

Journal article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · July 12, 2011 Featured Publication Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of visual dysfunction worldwide. Amyloid β (Aβ) peptides, Aβ1-40 (Aβ40) and Aβ1-42 (Aβ42), have been implicated previously in the AMD disease process. Consistent with a pathogenic role for Aβ, we sh ... Full text Link to item Cite

Heparan sulfate, including that in Bruch's membrane, inhibits the complement alternative pathway: implications for age-related macular degeneration.

Journal article J Immunol · November 1, 2010 Featured Publication An imbalance between activation and inhibition of the complement system has been implicated in the etiologies of numerous common diseases. Allotypic variants of a key complement fluid-phase regulatory protein, complement factor H (CFH), are strongly associ ... Full text Link to item Cite

The pivotal role of the complement system in aging and age-related macular degeneration: hypothesis re-visited.

Journal article Prog Retin Eye Res · March 2010 Featured Publication During the past ten years, dramatic advances have been made in unraveling the biological bases of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of irreversible blindness in western populations. In that timeframe, two distinct lines of evide ... Full text Link to item Cite

Rapid and sensitive method for detection of Y402, H402, I62, and V62 variants of complement factor H in human plasma samples using mass spectrometry.

Journal article Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci · April 2009 Featured Publication PURPOSE: Variations in the complement factor H (CFH) gene are tightly associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) across diverse populations. Of the many nonsynonymous coding variants in CFH, two are most strongly associated with increased risk ... Full text Link to item Cite

Unraveling a multifactorial late-onset disease: from genetic susceptibility to disease mechanisms for age-related macular degeneration.

Journal article Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet · 2009 Featured Publication Aging-associated neurodegenerative diseases significantly influence the quality of life of affected individuals. Genetic approaches, combined with genomic technology, have provided powerful insights into common late-onset diseases, such as age-related macu ... Full text Link to item Cite

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.

Journal article Vision Res · February 2008 Featured Publication Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a late-onset, neurodegenerative retinal disease that shares several clinical and pathological features with Alzheimer's disease (AD) including extracellular deposits containing amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptides. Immuno ... Full text Link to item Cite

Oxidative stress-induced expression and modulation of Phosphatase of Regenerating Liver-1 (PRL-1) in mammalian retina.

Journal article Biochim Biophys Acta · September 2007 Featured Publication The phosphatase of regenerating liver-1, PRL-1, gene was detected in a screen for foveal cone photoreceptor-associated genes. It encodes a small protein tyrosine phosphatase that was previously immunolocalized to the photoreceptors in primate retina. Here ... Full text Link to item Cite

Defining the human macula transcriptome and candidate retinal disease genes using EyeSAGE.

Journal article Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci · June 2006 Featured Publication PURPOSE: To develop large-scale, high-throughput annotation of the human macula transcriptome and to identify and prioritize candidate genes for inherited retinal dystrophies, based on ocular-expression profiles using serial analysis of gene expression (SA ... Full text Link to item Cite

Apolipoprotein E allele-dependent pathogenesis: a model for age-related retinal degeneration.

Journal article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · August 16, 2005 Featured Publication Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a late-onset, multifactorial, neurodegenerative disease of the retina and the leading cause of irreversible vision loss in the elderly in the Western world. We describe here a murine model that combines three known ... Full text Link to item Cite

Human RPE expression of cell survival factors.

Journal article Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci · May 2005 Featured Publication PURPOSE: To determine basal and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha-regulated expression of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cell survival factors and whether regulation is dependent on nuclear transcription factor (NF)-kappaB. METHODS: Cultured human RPE ce ... Full text Link to item Cite

Expression of the protein tyrosine phosphatase, phosphatase of regenerating liver 1, in the outer segments of primate cone photoreceptors.

Journal article Brain Res Mol Brain Res · April 14, 2000 Featured Publication Foveal cone photoreceptors are morphologically distinct and, presumably, express unique transcripts. We have identified a cDNA clone encoding the protein tyrosine phosphatase (PTP), phosphatase of regenerating liver 1 (PRL-1) in a screen for genes that are ... Full text Link to item Cite

Suppression of trkB expression by antisense oligonucleotides alters a neuronal phenotype in the rod pathway of the developing rat retina.

Journal article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · October 29, 1996 Featured Publication trkB is the high-affinity receptor for brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a trophic molecule with demonstrated effects on the survival and differentiation of a wide variety of neuronal populations. In the mammalian retina, trkB is localized to both ... Full text Link to item Cite

Localization of a retroviral element within the rd gene coding for the beta subunit of cGMP phosphodiesterase.

Journal article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · April 1, 1993 Featured Publication Retinal degeneration in the rd mouse is inherited as an autosomal recessive trait and is caused by a defect in the gene encoding the beta subunit of cGMP phosphodiesterase. Recently, a close genetic association of the rd gene with an endogenous xenotropic ... Full text Link to item Cite

Retinal degeneration in the rd mouse is caused by a defect in the beta subunit of rod cGMP-phosphodiesterase.

Journal article Nature · October 18, 1990 Featured Publication Mice homozygous for the rd mutation display hereditary retinal degeneration and the classic rd lines serve as a model for human retinitis pigmentosa. In affected animals the retinal rod photoreceptor cells begin degenerating at about postnatal day 8, and b ... Full text Link to item Cite

Isolation of a candidate cDNA for the gene causing retinal degeneration in the rd mouse.

Journal article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · December 1989 Featured Publication The inherited retinal degeneration of the rd mouse results in the exclusive loss of one cell type, the photoreceptors. We took advantage of this visual-cell loss to devise a strategy for the isolation of photoreceptor-specific cDNAs based on the use of sub ... Full text Link to item Cite