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Debra A. Thompson, Ph.D., is Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and Professor of Biological Chemistry, at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center in Ann Arbor. Dr. Thompson received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Michigan State University in 1984. She joined faculty at the University of Michigan in 1990 after completing her postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she was a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell fellow. Dr. Thompson's research focuses on elucidating the genetics and molecular mechanisms which underlie severe early-onset forms of inherited retinal degeneration. One emphasis is on studies of the visual cycle; the metabolic processing of vitamin A that supplies the light-sensing chromophore, 11-cis retinal, to the rod and cone cells. Work in her laboratory contributed to the identification of the genes encoding the visual cycle proteins RPE65, LRAT, and RDH12 as disease genes responsible for Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a devastating disease resulting in profound visual disability in children and young adults. Her studies also identified an unusual pattern of inheritance of mutations in RPE65 and MERTK that is designated uniparental disomy (UPD), a condition not previously associated with inherited retinal degeneration. Other areas of her research program include mechanistic studies of photoreceptor renewal and intracellular transport as they relate to inherited retinal degeneration. Dr. Thompson’s ongoing studies are focused on elucidating the basic mechanisms which regulate vitamin A metabolism in the retina, as well as the pathogenetic mechanisms associated visual cycle defects, in order to build the foundation needed to develop targeted forms treatment for this group of diseases. Dr. Thompson’s work has been supported by grants from the National Eye Institute, the Foundation Fighting Blindness, Research to Prevent Blindness, and Midwest Eye-Banks and Transplantation Center. She received the Research to Prevent Blindness Lew R. Wasserman Merit Award 1999, and has been an Executive Editor for Experimental Eye Research since 2000. She is active in training graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and teaching in the first year medical school curriculum since 1993. |
