Education:
PhD, Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
MPH, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
BA, University of the South, Sewanee, TN
Clinical/Research Interests:
The role of vascular smooth muscle cells in age-related cerebrovascular dysfunction and cognitive decline
Age-related vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID), a subgroup of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) is a common cause of disability and reduced quality of life among the elderly. Extensive recent data have demonstrated that microvascular pathologies in the brain play a central role in these processes. These pathologies include cerebral microhemorrhages (CMH), blood-brain-barrier disruption, microvascular rarefaction, and impaired cerebral myogenic autoregulation. While the role of these vascular complications in cognitive decline has been clearly established, the underlying cellular mechanisms for increased age-related vascular fragility are unknown. Our lab is particularly interested in the role of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) in brain aging. Blood vessel integrity requires plasticity of VSMCs, which exhibit an adaptive switch from a highly contractile to a protective, anti-fragility phenotype in response to stress. Aging fundamentally alters VSMC phenotypic switching, suppressing the adoption of these protective VSMC features, which are otherwise promoted by insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1. Circulating IGF-1 levels are dramatically decreased with age. Low IGF-1 levels increase the risk for cerebromicrovascular disease and promote the development of CMH in our rodent models, supporting a role for IGF-1 deficiency in age-related vascular fragility. Our lab is exploring the hypothesis is that impaired VSMC plasticity and function due to IGF-1 deficiency has a fundamental role in increased cerebrovascular fragility and development of cerebrovascular pathologies and cognitive decline with age. We utilize a variety of animal models to evaluate changes in behavior and cognition, vascular physiology, vascular cell biology, and molecular regulation in VSMCs. Our current projects focus on 1) the hypothesis that VSMCs contribute to the development of VCID/ADRD phenotypes in IGF-1 signaling-deficient models, 2) the dynamic balance between VSMCs with maladaptive phenotypes and VSMCs with protective phenotypes induced by age-dependent decrease of IGF1, and 3) the transcriptional mechanisms governing maladaptive and protective VSMC phenotypes in regions of vascular fragility/CMH and in surrounding intact vessels. This work will significantly enhance our understanding of the role of IGF-1 deficiency in the development of CMH and will provide insight into underlying cellular mechanisms which are critical for the development of effective therapies.
Mechanisms underlying vascular smooth muscle cell phenotypic plasticity
Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are an essential component of vascular homeostasis and vascular function. VSMCs retain a high degree of plasticity and can transition from a contractile to a migratory/synthetic state in response to signaling from a variety of stimuli, including growth factors, mechanical stretch, cholesterol, and oxidative stress. The phenotypic switch to a migratory state is an important part of vascular development, but can lead to pathological changes in various disease states including the vessel remodeling associated with diabetic retinopathy, atherosclerosis, vascularization of tumors, and cerebromicrovascular disease. Much remains unknown about the mechanisms which regulate this phenotypic switch and about the variety of synthetic phenotypes VSMCs can adopt. Our lab is interested in mechanisms underlying regulation of this plasticity, and have identified a variety of factors including transcription factors, guidance proteins, and small GTPases that play a role in this process. We are also interested in understanding what signaling leads to the adoption of some aspects of the synthetic phenotype and not others. These studies are essential to our understanding of VSMC phenotypic switching and provide insight into the regulation of a process that is critical to multiple debilitating diseases.
Understanding mechanisms associated with phenotypic heterogeneity in inherited retinal degenerations
Peripherin 2 (PRPH2), is a photoreceptor-specific tetraspanin protein necessary for the formation and function of rod and cone outer segments (OSs). Mutations in PRPH2 lead to severe autosomal dominant retinal degenerations. Critically, these mutations lead to widely varying blinding phenotypes ranging from severe retinitis pigmentosa to milder forms of macular and pattern dystrophy. PRPH2-associated disease can display a high degree of variability in phenotype and severity both among distinct mutations and between patients carrying the same mutation. Our past research utilized mouse models to understand how different PRPH2 mutations led to different disease phenotypes on a biochemical, cellular, and physiological level. However, very little is known about what contributes to the vast variability seen among patients carrying the same mutation. Understanding contributors to this intrafamilial phenotypic heterogeneity has been the focus of our more recent work. Using in vitro and in vivo models, we and others have shown that Prph2-associated disease can arise due to loss-of-function (haploinsufficiency) or complex gain-of-function mechanisms, often associated with defects in oligomerization between PRPH2 and its homologue rod outer segment membrane protein 1 (ROM1). In contrast to PRPH2, no pathogenic mutations in ROM1 have been confirmed in patients. Eliminating Rom1 (Rom1-/-) in mice leads to minor defects, so it has been assumed that ROM1 plays an ancillary role. However, recently we showed that in a mouse model carrying a Prph2 mutation associated with phenotypic variability in patients (Y141C), removing Rom1 results in the conversion of cone-rod dystrophy to a rod-cone RP phenotype, suggesting ROM1 may play a role in PRPH2-associated disease. Our current research is focused on understanding how non-pathogenic ROM1 variants as well as non-pathogenic PRPH2 variants found on the opposing allele (i.e. not the allele with the primary pathogenic mutation, also known as haplotypes in trans) affect PRPH2-associated phenotypes. This work involves both basic science experiments to evaluate the molecular and biochemical defects associated with PRPH2/ROM1 variants as well as collaborations with clinical scientists and clinical geneticists to understand the extent to which novel PRPH2/ROM1 variants exist in patient populations.
Select Publications:
- Miller, L. R.*, Bickel, M. A.*, Vance, M. L.*, Vaden, H.*, Nagykaldi, D.*, Nyul-Toth, A., Bullen, E. C.*, Gautam, T., Tarantini, S., Yabluchanskiy, A., Kiss, T., Ungvari, Z., Conley, S. M.# (2024). Vascular smooth muscle cell-specific Igf1r deficiency exacerbates the development of hypertension-induced cerebral microhemorrhages and gait defects. GeroScience, 46(3), 3481-3501. PMID: 38388918. DOI: 10.1007/s11357-024-01090-7
- Huston, C.*, Milan, M., Vance, M.*, Bickel, M.*, Miller, L.*, Negri, S., Hibbs, C.*, Vaden, H.*, Hayes, L. N., Csiszar, A., Ungvari, Z., Yabluchanskiy, A., Tarantini, S., Conley, S. M.# (2024). The effects of time restricted feeding on age-related changes in the mouse retina. Experimental Gerontology. Jul 5:194:112510. doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2024.112510. Online ahead of print.
- Miller, L. R.*, Bickel, M. A.*, Tarantini, S., Runion, M. E.*, Matacchiera, Z.*, Vance, M. L.*, Hibbs, C.*, Vaden, H.*, Nagykaldi, D.*, Martin, T.*, Bullen, E. C.*, Pinckard, J.*, Kiss, T., Howard, E., Yabluchanskiy, A., Conley, S. M.# (2024). IGF1R deficiency in vascular smooth muscle cells impairs myogenic autoregulation and cognition in mice. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 16, 1320808. PMID: 38425784. DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2024.1320808
- Lewis, T. R., Makia, M. S., Castillo, C. M., Hao, Y., Al-Ubaidi, M. R., Skiba, N. P., Conley, S. M., Arshavsky, V. Y., Naash, M. I. (2023). ROM1 is redundant to PRPH2 as a molecular building block of photoreceptor disc rims. eLife, 12. PMID: 37991486. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.89444
- Bickel, M. A.*, Sherry, D. M., Bullen, E. C.*, Vance, M. L.*, Jones, K. L., Howard, E., Conley, S. M.# (2023). Microvascular smooth muscle cells exhibit divergent phenotypic switching responses to platelet-derived growth factor and insulin-like growth factor 1https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37716411/. Microvascular research, 151, 104609. PMID: 37716411. DOI: 10.1016/j.mvr.2023.104609
- Ikelle, L., Makia, M., Lewis, T., Crane, R., Kakakhel, M., Conley, S. M., Birtley, J. R., Arshavsky, V. Y., Al-Ubaidi, M. R., Naash, M. I. (2023). Comparative study of PRPH2 D2 loop mutants reveals divergent disease mechanism in rods and cones. Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS, 80(8), 214. PMID: 37466729. DOI: 10.1007/s00018-023-04851-3
- Bickel, M. A.*, Csik, B., Gulej, R.*, Ungvari, A., Nyul-Toth, A., Conley, S. M.# (2023). Cell non-autonomous regulation of cerebrovascular aging processes by the somatotropic axis. Frontiers in endocrinology, 14, 1087053. PMID: 36755922. DOI: 10.3389/fendo.2023.1087053
- Conley, S. M., McClard, C. K., Mwoyosvi, M. L.*, Alkadhem, N., Radojevic, B., Klein, M., Birch, D., Ellis, A., Icks, S. W., Guddanti, T., Bennett, L. D. (2022). Delineating the clinical phenotype of patients with the c.629C>G, p.Pro210Arg mutation in peripherin-2. Investigative ophthalmology & visual science, 63(8), 19. PMID: 35861669. DOI: 10.1167/iovs.63.8.19
- Tebbe, L., Sakthivel, H.*, Makia, M., Kakakhel, M., Conley, S. M., Al-Ubaidi, M.#, Naash, M.# (2022). Prph2 disease mutations lead to structural and functional defects in the retinal pigment epithelium. FASEB Journal, 36(5), e22284. PMID: PMID: 35344225. DOI: doi: 10.1096/fj.202101562RR.
- Miller, L. R.*, Tarantini, S., Nyul-Toth, A., Johnston, M. P.*, Martin, T.*, Bullen, E. C.*, Bickel, M.*, Sonntag, W. E., Yabluchanskiy, A., Csiszar, A., Ungvari, Z., Elliott, M., Conley, S. M.# (2022). Increased susceptibility to cerebral microhemorrhages is associated with imaging signs of microvascular degeneration in the retina in an insulin-like growth factor 1 deficient mouse model of accelerated aging. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 14, 788296. DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.788296
- Kiss, T., Nyúl-Tóth, Á., Gulej, R.*, Tarantini, S., Csipo, T., Mukli, P., Ungvari, A., Balasubramanian, P., Yabluchanskiy, A., Benyo, Z., Conley, S. M., Wren, J. D., Garman, L., Huffman, D. M., Csiszar, A., Ungvari, Z. (2022). Old blood from heterochronic parabionts accelerates vascular aging in young mice: transcriptomic signature of pathologic smooth muscle remodeling. GeroScience. PMID: 35124764. DOI: 10.1007/s11357-022-00519-1
- Kakakhel, M., Tebbe, L., Makia, M. S., Conley, S. M., Sherry, D. M., Al-Ubaidi, M. R., Naash, M. I. (2020). Syntaxin 3 is essential for photoreceptor outer segment protein trafficking and survival. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(34), 20615-20624. PMID: 32778589. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2010751117
- Conley, S. M., Stuck, M. W., Watson, J. N.*, Zulliger, R., Burnett, J. L., Naash, M. I. (2019). Prph2 initiates outer segment morphogenesis but maturation requires Prph2/Rom1 oligomerization. Human molecular genetics, 28(3), 459-475. PMID: 30307502. DOI: 10.1093/hmg/ddy359
- Conley, S. M., Stuck, M. W., Watson, J. N.*, Naash, M. I. (2017). Rom1 converts Y141C-Prph2-associated pattern dystrophy to retinitis pigmentosa. Human molecular genetics, 26(3), 509-518. PMID: 28053051. DOI: 10.1093/hmg/ddw408
- Conley, S. M., Naash, M. I. (2014). Gene therapy for PRPH2-associated ocular disease: challenges and prospects. Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine, 4(11), a017376. PMID: 25167981. DOI: 10.1101/cshperspect.a017376
- Conley, S. M., Al-Ubaidi, M. R., Han, Z., Naash, M. I. (2014). Rim formation is not a prerequisite for distribution of cone photoreceptor outer segment proteins. FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, 28(8), 3468-79. PMID: 24736412. DOI: 10.1096/fj.14-251397
- Han, Z., Conley, S. M., Makkia, R. S., Cooper, M. J., Naash, M. I. (2012). DNA nanoparticle-mediated ABCA4 delivery rescues Stargardt dystrophy in mice. The Journal of clinical investigation, 122(9), 3221-6. PMID: 22886305. DOI: 10.1172/JCI64833
- Conley, S. M., Naash, M. I. (2010). Nanoparticles for retinal gene therapy. Progress in retinal and eye research, 29(5), 376-97. PMID: 20452457. DOI: 10.1016/j.preteyeres.2010.04.004
Complete list of publications:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1P_S5xwUY52/bibliography/public/