Cell Stress in Health and Disease
When stressed, cells either adapt or die. Some mutations predispose our cells to death. For example, a single mutation in the light-sensing protein rhodopsin that impedes its proper folding causes photoreceptor cell death and thus blindness. We have discovered how to stimulate photoreceptor cells to degrade misfolded proteins and are testing the hypothesis that this discovery can be harnessed to treat blindness due to rhodopsin mutations and other diseases of protein misfolding such as Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS.
