Cell: Scientists develop functional retinas in-body.

September 23, 2020 /--- In a recent study, scientists for the first time produced a human-like retinal tissue-like organ model in a culture that could be used to study cell types associated with hereditary eye disease.
study was conducted by a team led by Botond Roska of the Basel Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology (IOB) and collaborators from the Novarian Institute, and the results were published in the recent journal Cell.
, lead author of the paper, said: "This study addresses a fundamentally unsealed need to develop retinal models that are very similar to real organs.
opens up the possibility of developing treatments in dishes aimed at individual patients.
" retina is part of the eye that receives and organizes visual information.
it contains millions of light-sensitive cells and nerves, and has five different layers that together send signals to the brain that allow people to see things outside.
retinas (called organoids) cultured by the IOB are derived from erypotent stem cells, which are then induced to form this five-layer structure from their own tissues.
mature organs can sense light on their surface, and they transmit visual impulses through synapses to the inner cell layer.
importantly, the IOB team developed a method that can produce thousands of highly uniform retinal organs, providing valuable resources for researchers around the world.
through genetic assessments of organoids, the team found that their transcription groups, or total gene readings, stabilized at the 38th week in the developmental state that contained most retinal cell types, which is also the average time for pregnancy in humans.
further symptoms, IOB researchers compared organ-like organs with the human retina from multi-organ donors.
donated retinas can soon be damaged by a lack of blood and oxygen, so the team developed a way to keep them fresh.
this method, the retina maintains light sensitivity and healthy function for up to 16 hours.
that mature organs become more and more similar to cell-specific transcription groups in the real retina over time.
, studies have shown that retinal disease maps to the same type of cells in organs and the real retina.
based on this discovery, IOB scientists made a significant contribution: they created a publicly available transcriptional map for each type of retinal cell.
these resources, researchers can now map diseases to retinal cells, which can also grow and study in petri dishes.
combined resources will lead to a large number of treatment opportunities.
(bioon.com) Source: Scientists create functional human retinas in a dish Source: Cameron S. Cowan et al. Cell Types of The Human Retina and Its Organoids at Single-Cell Resolution, Cell (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.08.013.