Reproducible production and image-based quality evaluation of retinal pigment epithelium sheets from human induced pluripotent stem cells.

ABSTRACT: Transplantation of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) sheets derived from human induced pluripotent cells (hiPSC) is a promising cell therapy for RPE degeneration, such as in age-related macular degeneration. Current RPE replacement therapies, however, face major challenges. They require a tedious manual process of selecting differentiated RPE from hiPSC-derived cells, and despite wide variation in quality of RPE sheets, there exists no efficient process for distinguishing functional RPE sheets from those unsuitable for transplantation. To overcome these issues, we developed methods for the generation of RPE sheets from hiPSC, and image-based evaluation. We found that stepwise treatment with six signaling pathway inhibitors along with nicotinamide increased RPE differentiation efficiency (RP

SUBMITTER: Ye K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7462996 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature