Erika Tatiana Camacho, PhD
Professor
Research in Dr. Camacho’s laboratory focuses on mathematically modeling and investigating both the healthy and diseased retinas at the cellular and molecular levels. Her work and interest centers on 1) the metabolic needs of cones in the absence of rods, before, during and after degeneration and retinal remodeling, 2) aerobic glycolysis and oxidative stress pathways in photoreceptors and the retinal pigment epithelium, 3) metabolic pathways implicated in photoreceptor degeneration, and 4) immune response in retinal degenerative diseases. In her earliest publication in this area, her work predicted the existence of a necessary mechanism experimentally discovered a year later – the rod-derived cone viability factor (RdCVF) and proposed equations describing the dynamics of the rod and cone outer segments and the RPE cells.