Daniel Stamer, Phd and colleagues, including Duke medical student Maria Gomez-Caraballo recently published a study that will pave the way for further glaucoma research.
Ocular hypertension is the primary and only modifiable risk factor for glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness. Intraocular pressure is regulated homeostatically by resistance to aqueous humor outflow through an architecturally complex tissue, the conventional/trabecular pathway.
In this study, they generated a comprehensive cell atlas of the human trabecular meshwork and neighboring tissues using single-cell RNA sequencing. They identified 12 distinct cell types and mapped region-specific expression of candidate genes. The utility of their atlas was demonstrated by mapping glaucoma-relevant genes to conventional outflow cell types.
Their study provides a comprehensive molecular and cellular classification of tissue structures responsible for intraocular pressure homeostasis in health and dysregulation in disease.