Quarterly Publication Award

Illuminating Photoreceptors

Until now, there has been insufficient understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying photoreceptor degeneration. Neuroscientists from Hamburg and Würzburg have now shed light on this with their latest research.

Dr. Aaron Schroers from the research group of Prof. Dr. Anja Schlecht, along with other scientists from the Institute of Neuroanatomy, the Center for Neurobiology (ZMNH), both at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, and the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Würzburg, were awarded the Quarterly Publication Award (QPA) III/2025 by the Anatomische Geselschaft for their study "Illuminating photoreceptors: TGFβ signaling modulates the severity of retinal degeneration", recently published in CCDpress.

The authors of the awarded study: Dr. Aaron Schroers (left) and Prof. Dr. Anja Schlecht (right), both from the Institute of Neuroanatomy at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (private images).

The underlying mechanisms of photoreceptor degeneration are still poorly understood, resulting in a lack of therapeutic options for diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration. In this study, which was recognized by the Anatomische Gesellschaft, a mouse model of light-induced photoreceptor degeneration was used and combined with single-cell RNA sequencing. This analysis identified the transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) signaling pathway as a key regulator in the course of degenerative processes.

A: Clustering of retinal cells based on their single-cell RNA expression profile 2. B: Under light damage conditions, the affected rods in particular change their expression profile. C: Virtual pseudo-time course of degeneration in light-damaged rod clusters (clusters 2, 4, and 5). D: Based on their expression behavior, the genes that statistically follow the pseudo-time perfectly are divided into three different groups (kmer clusters). E: Gene ontology enrichment analyses of the kmer clusters under light damage conditions show, among other things, a dysregulation of the TGF-β signaling pathway in rods particularly severely affected by light damage. (Data from Schroers et al., 2025).

Schroers A, Neueder A, Massoudy I, Dillinger AE, Ergün S, Braunger BM, Schlecht A. Illuminating photoreceptors: TGFβ signaling modulates the severeness of retinal degeneration. Cell Death Discov. 2025 Aug 15;11(1):384. doi: 10.1038/s41420-025-02685-5. PMID: 40817252; PMCID: PMC12356984.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41420-025-02685-5

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