Good news! This could be a breakthrough! Make the blind see again!
"Biomedical engineers ... have used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to grow specialized blood vessel cells critical to retinal health for the first time. When injected into mouse models of retinal disease, these "retinal endothelial cells" integrated into the damaged tissue to regenerate blood vessels and restore retinal function. Researchers also demonstrated the cells' ability to form functional retinal vascular tissue in a lab-grown environment, providing a pathway to model and research various eye diseases. ..."
From the abstract:
"Retinal microvascular diseases involve a compromised inner blood–retina barrier (iBRB), which remains poorly understood. A renewable source of human iBRB endothelium is thus vital for advancing eye research and treatment development.
Here we differentiated human induced pluripotent stem cells into retinal endothelial cells (iRECs) via the Wnt–β-catenin pathway, namely Norrin–Frizzled4 signalling.
These iRECs show genetic, protein and functional fidelity as well as unique retinal features.
When injected into oxygen-induced retinopathy mice, iRECs integrated into the host vascular network and revascularized the ischaemic eye, rescuing the tissue.
In microphysiological models, iRECs form perfusable microvascular networks that recapitulate iBRB morphology and phenotype in both healthy and diabetic states while also physiologically organizing and interacting with induced pluripotent stem cell-derived retinal pericytes.
Our study establishes functional human iRECs and microphysiological iBRB models that facilitate mechanistic studies aimed at identifying therapeutic targets and promoting the revascularization of injured retinas, thereby supporting treatment advancement."
Lab-Grown Retinal Cells Show Promise for New Eye Therapies (original news release) "Critical cells that line retinal blood vessels grown from stem cells restore retinal function in mouse models and form retinal tissue in a lab for future disease studies."
Derivation of functional retinal endothelial cells from human pluripotent stem cells for therapeutics and modelling (open access)
This image depicts a mouse’s retina suffering from conditions similar to diabetic retinopathy both before (right) and after (left) being treated with human lab-grown retinal endothelial cells.
The green in the left image shows the human lab-grown retinal endothelial cells integrating into the damaged mouse retina, demonstrating their potential use to treat early stages of the disease.
Fig. 1: Derivation of retinal endothelial cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells via the Norrin–Fz4 axis.
Fig. 4: iRECs revascularize the ischaemic eye.
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