National Eye Institute/National Institutes of Health

3 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Neuroscience

Experimental Models for Study of Retinal Pigment Epithelial Physiology and Pathophysiology

Arvydas Maminishkis¹, Sheldon S. Miller¹

¹National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health

We provide a reproducible method for culturing confluent monolayers of human fetal retinal pigment epithelial cells (hfRPE) cells that exhibit morphology, physiology, polarity, and protein and gene expression patterns of adult native tissue. This work has been extended to an animal model of several eye diseases.

Medicine

A Step by Step Protocol for Subretinal Surgery in Rabbits

Sami Al-Nawaiseh¹, Fabian Thieltges¹, Zengping Liu^1,2, Claudine Strack¹, Ralf Brinken¹, Norbert Braun³, Marc Wolschendorf³, Arvydas Maminishkis⁵, Nicole Eter⁴, Boris V. Stanzel^1,6

¹Department of Ophthalmology, University of Bonn, ²Department of Ophthalmology, National University of Singapore, ³Geuder AG, ⁴Department of Ophthalmology, University of Münster, ⁵Section on Epithelial and Retinal Physiology and Disease, National Eye Institute/National Institutes of Health, ⁶Surgical Retina Department, Singapore National Eye Centre

Retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) replacement strategies and gene-based therapy are considered for several retinal degenerative conditions. For clinical translation, large eye animal models are required to study surgical techniques applicable in patients. Here we present a rabbit model for subretinal surgery geared towards RPE transplantation, which is versatile and cost-efficient.

Biology

Efficient and Consistent Generation of Retinal Pigment Epithelium/Choroid Flatmounts from Human Eyes for Histological Analysis

Davide Ortolan¹, Andrei Volkov¹, Arvydas Maminishkis¹, Ruchi Sharma¹, Kapil Bharti¹

¹Ocular and Stem Cell Translational Research Section, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH)

We describe a method to efficiently separate retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) from the retina in human eyes and generate whole RPE/choroid flatmounts for histological and morphometric analyses of the RPE.