Rate My Professor Nora Caberoy

Nora Caberoy, Associate Professor in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, earned her Ph.D. in genetics and cell biology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami. During her postdoc in 2007, she identified the tubby protein's involvement in the clearance of photoreceptor debris in the eye, a process linked to macular degeneration. Her research expertise encompasses phagocytosis, retinal cell biology, retinal degenerative diseases including retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration, functional proteomics by phage display, and Alzheimer’s disease therapy. Caberoy delineates molecular mechanisms of blindness, hearing loss, and obesity, characterizing the tubby protein as a transcription factor, identifying genes it regulates, and unraveling its protein-protein interaction network. Mutations in the tubby gene resemble human syndromes such as Usher syndrome, retinitis pigmentosa, Bardet-Biedl syndrome, and Alström syndrome. She grew up in the Philippines, where early explorations of nature sparked her interest in biological sciences.

In Alzheimer’s research, she engineers novel hybrid proteins that bind oligomeric and fibrillar amyloid beta, sequestering it and directing phagocytic clearance via non-inflammatory pathways to reduce neuroinflammation. Caberoy received the prestigious National Institutes of Health/National Eye Institute Pathway to Independence Career Development Award. Her key publications include "Secretogranin III as a disease-associated ligand for antiangiogenic therapy of diabetic retinopathy" (2017), "Lyar Is a New Ligand for Retinal Pigment Epithelial Phagocytosis" (2015), "ABCF1 extrinsically regulates retinal pigment epithelial cell phagocytosis" (2015), "Reticulocalbin-1 Facilitates Microglial Phagocytosis" (2015), "Hepatoma-Derived Growth Factor-Related Protein-3 Is a Novel Angiogenic Factor" (2015), "Tubby Regulates Microglial Phagocytosis through MerTK" (2012), and "Galectin-3 is a new MerTK-specific eat-me signal" (2012). She has submitted a patent application for a chimeric protein-based method to clear amyloid beta. With 1,112 citations, Caberoy's contributions significantly advance retinal biology and neurodegenerative disease therapies.