Overview

The Rivers Lab is based in the Department of Pediatrics-Hematology, at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland (UCSF BCH Oakland). Angela Rivers MD-PhD is the principal investigator.

The Rivers Lab is the first to publish the novel discovery that there is a higher presence of red blood cells (RBC) containing mitochondria in sickle cell disease (SCD) mice and human patients compared to normal controls. Normally mitochondria are eliminated from RBCs in a process called mitophagy. Mitochondria in RBCs generate increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) and decrease RBC lifespan. Furthermore, the lab has published that the treatment of SCD mice with sirolimus, an m-TOR inhibitor, or RN-1, a LSD-1 inhibitor decreases the presence of RBC containing mitochondria, decreases ROS, and increases RBC lifespan. This work recently received funding entitled from the National Lung, Heart, and Blood Institute (See funding page). Our long-term goal is to translate our findings regarding the role of erythrocyte mitochondrial retention in SCD into pharmaceutical clinical trials.