Miranda L. Scalabrino, PhD

Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences; Assistant Professor of Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy

Locations

Eye Institute
925 N. 87th Street

Contact Information

mscalabrino@mcw.edu

Education

BS, Microbial, Molecular & Cell Biology, Auburn University
PhD, Medical Sciences: Genetics, University of Florida

Biography

I grew up in Mobile, AL, the birthplace of US Mardi Gras. I received my Bachelor of Science in Microbial, Molecular, and Cellular Biology from Auburn University, where I discovered a love for microorganisms, particularly those with properties beneficial to humans. I joined University of Florida’s Interdisciplinary Program in Biomedical Sciences for my PhD with the intention of studying bacteria, but quickly realized Florida was a world leader in virus-mediated gene therapy. While deciding on labs to rotate, I was shown an fluorescent microscopy image of a retina expressing green fluorescent protein in photoreceptors and immediately fell in love; it was the most beautiful scientific image I had even seen by that point in my career and I desperately wanted to take similar images. I joined Dr. Shannon Boye's lab, developing adeno associated viruses to target retinal bipolar cells, which receive photoreceptor signals. After graduating in 2016, I joined Dr. Aravind Asokan’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow in the Gene Therapy Center at University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, where I worked on strategies to enable more robust gene expression from gene therapy vectors. However, I missed the retina, so I moved to Dr. Greg Field’s lab at Duke University, then University of California Los Angeles, to investigate retinal circuitry changes during retinal disease and following therapy using multielectrode arrays to record retinal output. Being in the Field Lab gave me ample opportunity to develop new techniques to interrogate retinal function: we pioneered a prey capture task to assess vision loss in animals with retinitis pigmentosa, utilized novel chemogenetic strategies to modify retinal function (where my gene therapy skills finally became useful to the lab), and created the first transcriptome of rewiring bipolar cells during retinitis pigmentosa and following gene therapy.

Honors and Awards

Best Postdoc Talk, Duke Neurobiology Annual Retreat, 2022
Travel Award, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 2020, 2021, 2022
Fellowship, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Science Communication, 2021- 2022
Duke School of Medicine Interdisciplinary Colloquia Award (co-PI), 2019
Best Postdoc Poster, Duke Neurobiology Retreat, 2019
Scholarship, Foundation Fighting Blindness tuition award to attend CSHL course, 2019
Duke Postdoctoral Award for Professional Development, 2019
Holland-Trice Scholars Award (co-PI), 2018-2020
Travel Award, American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy Annual Meeting, 2015, 2017
Travel Award, University of Florida Graduate Student Council, 2015
Semi-finalist Advancement to Candidacy Award, University of Florida Medical Guild, 2015
Fellow, National Eye Institute Vision Sciences T32 Training Grant, University of Florida, 2014-2016
Travel Award, FASEB Retinal Neurobiology and Visual Processing, 2014

Research Interests

The Scalabrino Lab aims to distinguish between the positive and negative changes the retina undergoes as a reaction to inherited disease impacting vision. By harnessing adaptive mechanisms, we can develop biological therapies to halt blindness and restore vision in patients with inherited retinal diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and congenital stationary night blindness. We use a variety of techniques to accomplish this goal, aiming for a wholistic picture of retinal health and function. These include electrophysiology (multielectrode array retina recordings, electroretinography), live animal retinal imaging (optimal coherence tomography, fundoscopy), histology (confocal microscopy), molecular biology (viral vectors, RNA sequencing), and behavior (prey capture).

Late gene therapy limits the restoration of retinal function in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa.

(Scalabrino ML, Thapa M, Wang T, Sampath AP, Chen J, Field GD.) Nat Commun. 2023 Dec 12;14(1):8256 PMID: 38086857 PMCID: PMC10716155 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85179645989 12/13/2023
Intravitreal injection of a rationally designed AAV capsid library in non-human primate identifies variants with enhanced retinal transduction and neutralizing antibody evasion.

(Kellish PC, Marsic D, Crosson SM, Choudhury S, Scalabrino ML, Strang CE, Hill J, McCullough KT, Peterson JJ, Fajardo D, Gupte S, Makal V, Kondratov O, Kondratova L, Iyer S, Witherspoon CD, Gamlin PD, Zolotukhin S, Boye SL, Boye SE.) Mol Ther. 2023 Dec 06;31(12):3441-3456 PMID: 37814449 PMCID: PMC10727955 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85174458614 10/10/2023
Large-scale interrogation of retinal cell functions by 1-photon light-sheet microscopy.

(Roy S, Wang D, Rudzite AM, Perry B, Scalabrino ML, Thapa M, Gong Y, Sher A, Field GD.) Cell Rep Methods. 2023 Apr 24;3(4):100453 PMID: 37159670 PMCID: PMC10163030 05/09/2023
Cones and cone pathways remain functional in advanced retinal degeneration.

(Ellis EM, Paniagua AE, Scalabrino ML, Thapa M, Rathinavelu J, Jiao Y, Williams DS, Field GD, Fain GL, Sampath AP.) Curr Biol. 2023 Apr 24;33(8):1513-1522.e4 PMID: 36977418 PMCID: PMC10133175 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85152914523 03/29/2023
Neuroscience: Visual restoration with optogenetics.

(Scalabrino ML, Field GD.) Curr Biol. 2023 Feb 06;33(3):R110-R112 PMID: 36750022 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85147627541 02/08/2023
Robust cone-mediated signaling persists late into rod photoreceptor degeneration.

(Scalabrino ML, Thapa M, Chew LA, Zhang E, Xu J, Sampath AP, Chen J, Field GD.) Elife. 2022 Aug 30;11 PMID: 36040015 PMCID: PMC9560159 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-85139880693 08/31/2022
Tissue-Dependent Expression and Translation of Circular RNAs with Recombinant AAV Vectors In Vivo.

(Meganck RM, Borchardt EK, Castellanos Rivera RM, Scalabrino ML, Wilusz JE, Marzluff WF, Asokan A.) Mol Ther Nucleic Acids. 2018 Dec 07;13:89-98 PMID: 30245471 PMCID: PMC6154398 09/25/2018
Impact of Heparan Sulfate Binding on Transduction of Retina by Recombinant Adeno-Associated Virus Vectors.

(Boye SL, Bennett A, Scalabrino ML, McCullough KT, Van Vliet K, Choudhury S, Ruan Q, Peterson J, Agbandje-McKenna M, Boye SE.) J Virol. 2016 Apr;90(8):4215-4231 PMID: 26865709 PMCID: PMC4810560 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-84963826914 02/13/2016
Novel Methodology for Creating Macaque Retinas with Sortable Photoreceptors and Ganglion Cells.

(Choudhury S, Strang CE, Alexander JJ, Scalabrino ML, Lynch Hill J, Kasuga DT, Witherspoon CD, Boye SL, Gamlin PD, Boye SE.) Front Neurosci. 2016;10:551 PMID: 27990105 PMCID: PMC5131003 12/19/2016
Intravitreal delivery of a novel AAV vector targets ON bipolar cells and restores visual function in a mouse model of complete congenital stationary night blindness.

(Scalabrino ML, Boye SL, Fransen KM, Noel JM, Dyka FM, Min SH, Ruan Q, De Leeuw CN, Simpson EM, Gregg RG, McCall MA, Peachey NS, Boye SE.) Hum Mol Genet. 2015 Nov 01;24(21):6229-39 PMID: 26310623 PMCID: PMC4612567 SCOPUS ID: 2-s2.0-84949238699 08/28/2015