??Diabetes mellitus is a disease affecting 25.8 million people in the United States and is characterized by high blood glucose levels that result from defects in the body's ability to produce and/or use insulin. Vision loss is evident in over half of diagnosed patients and is attributed to diabetic retinopathy, a microvascular disease that involves the breakdown in the blood retinal barrier causing retinal vascular leakage. Occludin and Zonula Occluden-1 (ZO-1) are the key proteins involved in maintaining the tight junctions of the blood brain barrier, which mediate the highly selective diffusion of molecules from the blood to the retina. Elevated levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) result in Occludin and ZO-1 phosphorylation, which is demonstrated to cause disassembly of the tight junctions. This project is aimed at elucidating if the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway is the signal transduction pathway that is activated by VEGF leading to the phosphorylation of tight junction proteins and the disassembly of tight junctions in diabetic retinopathy.  An inhibitor of the MAPK pathway will be used to block phosphorylation in a cell culture model and resulting inhibition of tight junciton protein phosphorylation will be monitored using western blot analysis.

Determination of the biochemical pathway causing tight junction disassembly in diabetic retinopathy

247th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.