To begin, thaw and culture H9-embryonic stem cells in maintenance medium containing Y-27632. On day zero, once the colonies become 70%confluent, wash them with 2 milliliters of DPBS, then incubate the cells with 0.5 milliliters of cell dissociation solution containing 20 micromoles per liter Y-27632. To abort the digestion, add 3 milliliters of maintenance medium containing 20 micromoles per liter Y-27632.
To pellet the cells, centrifuge the tube at 190 G for five minutes and discard the supernatant. Resuspend the pellet in one milliliter of growth factor-free chemically-defined medium with Y-27632. After counting the cells, add 1.2 million cells to 10 milliliters of growth factor-free chemically-defined medium and mix well.
Then dispense 100 microliters of cell suspension to each well of a 96 well conical bottom plate. Incubate in a humidified 5%carbon dioxide atmosphere. To induce retina formation on day six, add medium containing BMP4 to each well of a 96 well V-bottom plate and incubate again.
On day nine, 12, and 15, replace half of the spent medium with fresh medium without BMP4. On day 18, carefully transfer the formed embryoid bodies to a 15 milliliter centrifuge tube. After the natural precipitation of the embryoid bodies, gently remove the supernatant and rinse them with the neural retina differentiation medium.
Then place the embryoid bodies in a low absorption six well plate and incubate the plate again. On day 21, Brightfield images showed continuous neuroepithelial structure in the neural retina generated using this method. The retinal induction success rate was significantly higher and retinal organoids generated using this protocol were similar in size and morphology compared to other methods.
