PhD student Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
Abstract: The irreversible deprivation of retinal neurons leads to a variety of ocular neurodegenerative diseases such as macular degeneration and glaucoma. Retinal progenitor cells have shown their therapeutic potential for these eye diseases. Despite human retinal progenitor cells (hRPCs) in retinal organoids being well-characterized, the long-term maintenance of these cells in vitro is still not feasible. Here, we established long-term expandable hRPCs from human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived retinal organoids as three-dimensional spheres. These hRPC-spheres expressed retinal progenitor markers visual system homeobox 2 (VSX2), paired box 6 (PAX6), retina and anterior neural fold homeobox (RAX, also known as RX), and SRY-box transcription factor 2 (SOX2). Also, hRPC-spheres maintained their multipotency properties including both self-renewal ability and differentiation capacities over 15 passages. Therefore, this long-term expanding hRPC-sphere line with lower heterogeneity offers novel insights into the stemness of retinal progenitor cells and a promising source of cell-based therapeutics for alleviating common degenerative eye diseases.
Funding Source: This work was funded by Health@InnoHK funding.
