Dr. Rizzolo joined the Yale faculty in 1993 where he serves as the Director of Medical Sciences for the Section of Anatomy, and Course Director of Human Anatomy and Development for first-year clinical students. He also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science. Dr. Rizzolo recently served on the Program Planning Committee of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, and chaired the subcommittee on Retinal Cell Biology. He is currently on the editorial board of a new, peer-reviewed, WEB journal, Molecular Vision. Many retinopathies involve a disruption of the epithelium's interactions with the neural retina or its uncontrolled proliferation.
Surgical interventions limit the progression of disease, but fail to restore function.
We observed that the RPE develops gradually under the influence of the neighboring tissues. Because different interactions appear at different times of development, we are able to identify and investigate them. We devised several primary cell and organ culture systems that model different aspects of development. As the neural retina matures, it secretes factors that induce the RPE to form the outer blood-retinal barrier by decreasing the permeability of RPE junctions. These integrins are redistributed when the neural retina and its extracellular matrix mature.