Donald J. Alcendor PhD

Donald Alcendor, PhD is an Associate Professor at Meharry Medical College and an Adjunct Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Alcendor completed his graduate studies at University of California, Davis in Molecular Virology. He completed his post-graduate studies at the NIH and Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore Maryland in departments of Molecular Virology and Viral Oncology respectively. Dr. Alcendor is the first to investigate the infectivity of human retinal pericytes for HCMV and their potential role in viral dissemination in the inner blood retinal barrier (IBRB) and the concomitant implications for CMV-associated ocular disease.

Dr. Alcendor’s lab utilizes a tri-cell culture model system of the neurovascular unit (NVU) within the IBRB developed with primary human cells that are separately cultivated in a single source medium and infected with low passaged clinical isolates of HCMV from newborns at low multiplicities of infection to mimic human physiological conditions. He finds that retinal pericytes within the IBRB are most permissive for HCMV infection when compared retinal endothelial cells and Müller cells and are involved in the production of proinflammatory and angiogenic cytokines.