Generating Neural Retina from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Retinopathy is one of the main causes of blindness worldwide. Investigating its pathogenesis is essential for the early diagnosis and timely treatment of retinopathy. Unfortunately, ethical barriers hinder the collection of evidence from humans. Recently, numerous studies have shown that human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) can be differentiated into retinal organoids (ROs) using different induction protocols, which have enormous potential in retinopathy for disease modeling, drug screening, and stem cell-based therapies. This study describes an optimized induction protocol to generate neural retina (NR) that significantly reduces the probability of vesiculation and fusion, increasing the success rate of production until day 60. Based on the ability of PSCs to self-reorganize after dissociation, combined with certain complementary factors, this new method can specifically drive NR differentiation. Furthermore, the approach is uncomplicated, cost-effective, exhibits notable repeatability and efficiency, presents encouraging prospects for personalized models of retinal diseases, and supplies a plentiful cell reservoir for applications such as cell therapy, drug screening, and gene therapy testing.