Biography

Brief Biography of Dr. Le
Dr. Le is the Inaugural Choctaw Nation Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research,tenured Associate Professor of Medicine Endocrinology and adjunct Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Ophthalmology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC). He graduated with a B.S. in Biochemistry from Fudan University in China and then workedas an Engineer of Biochemical and Molecular Biology Reagentsin Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Le did his Ph.D. in microbial biochemistry and genetics with Dr. Leo C. Vining at Dalhousie University of Canada. After a brief postdoctoral training in genome biology with Dr. Melanie Dobson at Dalhousie, he joined laboratory of Dr. Brian Sauer, the original developer of the Cre/lox technology, as Visiting Fellow in the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Metabolisms at NIH/NIDDK. He subsequently moved with Dr. Sauer and was a Senior Research Scientist at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. During the time, he was intensively trained in Cre/lox biology and complicated genetic manipulation in mice. He was recruited to retinal biology field and Dean A. McGee Eye Institute/OUHSC in 2000. Dr. Le joinedDepartment of Medicine Endocrinology and Diabetes Centerat OUHSC with a tenure-track position in 2007.

A major focus of Dr. Le’s current work is on diabetic complications, particularly on diabetic retinopathy (DR), the number one cause of blindness in working aged people in developed countries. Dr. Le is a leader in addressing cellular mechanisms of DR, using cell-specific and inducible gene targeting systems generated in his laboratory. He was the first to demonstratedefinitely the role of Müller gliain the breakdownof a blood-retina barrier, endothelial barrier, in DR. Recently, his laboratory solved a 30-year problem in the field and established an assay for visualizing and quantifying blood-content leakage through the second blood-retina barrier, retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) barrier. This work will impact the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of RPE barrier breakdown-deriveddiabetic macular edema, a major vision loss in DR.Dr. Le’s laboratory is also working on the mechanisms and pre-clinical treatment of diabetes-induced retinal neuron degeneration, an emerging area of DR research, and mechanisms of retinal degeneration and age-related macular degeneration