Author Spotlight: Harnessing Mouse Eye Chambers for Noninvasive Liver Spheroid Studies

In our group, we use the anterior chamber of the mouse eye as a transplantation site for in vivo and non-invasive imaging of liver steroids. This newly established imaging platform will provide a unique tool for researchers and expand our understanding of liver physiology and pathology in both basic and preclinical research. In biomedical research, we rely on the visualization of cellular processes to understand disease mechanisms, and the field of liver research currently lacks methods for in vivo high resolution imaging in which liver cells can be monitored longitudinally over time.

Compared to intravital liver imaging, our technique is non-invasive, and the liver cells can be imaged repeatedly over numerous imaging sessions, allowing us to monitor liver function at single cell resolution in response to different challenges. With our platform, the liver steroids survive in the eye for many months, and the same recipient mouse can be imaged noninvasively over time. This allows a reduction in the number of experimental animals we use while increasing the quality of the in vivo data.

Over the past decade, our group has developed the eye imaging platform to be a powerful research tool. It was initially designed for the imaging of pancreatic eyelets, but has now been adapted to liver steroids and has the potential to be expanded to other organs and research areas.