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Address
60 Haven Avenue, B1
New York, NY 10032
USA
Phone:212-305-6748
Fax: 212-305-6749
Email:[email protected]
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Education and Training
| PhD
| 1985
| Vanderbilt University
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| BS
| 1979
| Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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Associate Research Scientist of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health
and:
Director, Eye Radiation and Environmental Research Laboratory
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| Cataract is the leading cause of blindness in the third world. In the United States, cataract surgery consumes 12% of the overall Medicare budget and comprises 60% of all vision-related costs. Given the increasing human lifespan, the societal burden of cataract is expected to worsen in future years.
The ocular environment is continually exposed to a variety of insults, including peroxides produced by photochemical reaction, ultraviolet light, toxins and ionizing radiation. The cellular response(s) to such stresses is of fundamental interest to our laboratory. As oxidative stress is believed to be a major early or initiating event in the development of many types of lens opacification, its role in cataractogenesis is of great interest.
Furthermore, the lens is considered one of the most radiosensitive tissues in the body and its primary pathology, cataract, is easily observed in-vivo. Thus, the lens provides an ideal model system to understand the relationship between low dose radiation exposure and genetic heterogeneity. Current NASA and DOE funded research is directed towards understanding whether exposure to very low doses of X-irradiation and/or heavy ions causes cataract in animal model systems, some of which are heterozygous for genes involved in DNA repair and cell cycle checkpoint control. (Cataract is the only unequivocal, long-term degenerative effect reported for astronauts exposed to cosmic radiation.) These studies provide an opportunity to study the effects of low-dose radiation in a model system that has great relevance and similarity to the human response to radiation exposure and is thus likely to be important to the development of appropriate guidelines for national radiation risk policy.
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