Members | Leducq Fellows
James Dutton, PhD 

Dr. Dutton’s research involves finding new approaches to disease modeling and treatment. He is PI of a project using miPSC-derived limb bud progenitors to improve limb and digit regeneration and the Team PI of an NEI-funded RO1 generating an extensive biobank of retinal derived iPSC from patients and eye donors with Dry Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). These retinal iPSCs provide an excellent experimental model to study mitochondrial dysfunction in AMD and for screening therapeutic compounds.  Dr. Dutton has also developed novel accelerated neural induction protocols to efficiently generate hiPSC-derived neuronal and glial cells for testing regenerative strategies to treat neural injury and disease.  The research team  led by Dr. Dutton also works on a range of other team projects including using iPSCs and blastocyst complementation to generate endothelium and heart, directly related to the Leducq Network of Excellence Award.

Representative publications include:

Shang P, Ambrosino H, Hoang J, Geng Z, Zhu X, Shen S, Eminhizer M, Hong E, Zhang M, Qu J, Du J, Montezuma SR, Dutton JR, Ferrington DA.The Complement Factor H (Y402H) risk polymorphism for age-related macular degeneration affects metabolism and response to oxidative stress in the retinal pigment epithelium. Free Radic Biol Med. 2024 Nov 20;225:833-845. doi: 10.1016/j.freeradbiomed.2024.10.307. Epub 2024 Nov 2.PMID: 39491736. go to article

Steevens AR, Griesbach MW, You Y, Dutton JR, Low WC, Santi PA. Generation of inner ear sensory neurons using blastocyst complementation in a Neurog1+/--deficient mouse. Stem Cell Res Ther. 2021 Feb 12;12(1):122. doi: 10.1186/s13287-021-02184-1.PMID: 33579352. go to article

Ebeling MC, Geng Z, Kapphahn RJ, Roehrich H, Montezuma SR, Dutton JR, Ferrington DA. Impaired Mitochondrial Function in iPSC-Retinal Pigment Epithelium with the Complement Factor H Polymorphism for Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Cells. 2021 Apr 2;10(4):789. doi: 10.3390/cells10040789.PMID: 33918210. go to article

Li R, Walsh P, Truong V, Petersen A, Dutton JR, Hubel A. Differentiation of Human iPS Cells Into Sensory Neurons Exhibits Developmental Stage-Specific Cryopreservation Challenges. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2021 Dec 14;9:796960. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.796960. eCollection 2021.PMID: 34970550. go to article

Lavoie NS, Truong V, Malone D, Pengo T, Patil N, Dutton JR, Parr AM. Human induced pluripotent stem cells integrate, create synapses and extend long axons after spinal cord injury. J Cell Mol Med. 2022 Apr;26(7):1932-1942. doi: 10.1111/jcmm.17217. Epub 2022 Mar 8.PMID: 35257489. go to article

Simon NM, Kim Y, Gribnau J, Bautista DM, Dutton JR, Brem RB. Stem cell transcriptional profiles from mouse subspecies reveal cis-regulatory evolution at translation genes. Heredity (Edinb). 2024 Nov;133(5):308-316. doi: 10.1038/s41437-024-00715-z. Epub 2024 Aug 20.PMID: 39164520. go to article