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Lab-Grown Retinal Cells Offer New Hope for Treating Vision Loss
https://pratt.duke.edu/news/lab-grown-retinal-cells/
A Window into the Body
There’s an old saying that the eyes are windows into the soul, and it’s more literal than you’d think, the retina connects directly to the brain, technically making your eyes part of the central nervous system. That’s part of what makes a new advance from Duke University so exciting. Biomedical engineers there have, for the first time, grown the specialized blood vessel cells that keep the retina healthy. The findings were published June 30 in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
The Challenge
The retina is protected by a tight blood barrier built from unique cells called retinal endothelial cells. That barrier keeps the retina healthy but also makes it hard to treat, and when it breaks down, serious vision loss often follows. Until now, these cells could only be collected from actual patients, expensive and in short supply. The Duke team, led by Dr. Sharon Gerecht, instead grew them from induced pluripotent stem cells (reprogrammed adult cells), using a cocktail of growth factors to steer them into becoming true retinal cells.
The Results
The results were striking. In the lab, the cells organized into the same networks they form in a living eye, and when exposed to low oxygen and high glucose, the conditions behind diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of vision loss in working-age Americans, they broke down just like they do in patients, giving researchers a valuable new disease model. When injected into mice with weak retinal blood vessels, the cells integrated and helped build strong, healthy vessels.
Why It Matters
A renewable, lab-grown supply of these cells could lower costs and open the door to both preventative therapies and better drug testing for millions affected by retinal vascular disease. As always, this is early-stage research in mice and lab dishes, and it’ll be years before it reaches the exam chair. In the meantime, the best protection for your retinal blood vessels is what it’s always been: managing blood sugar and blood pressure, not smoking, eating well, and keeping up with regular dilated eye exams.
