Abstract: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) impairs central vision in almost 9% of people globally. During the development of AMD, the degeneration of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) leads to the loss or dysfunction of photoreceptors in retina, resulting in vision loss. RPE transplantation is a promising approach to treat AMD, however most RPE induction methods utilize spontaneous differentiation in culture systems supplemented with animal or serum products. In this report, we develop a chemically defined culture system to stagewisely induce RPE differentiation. The new platform accelerates the differentiation process, and allows RPE induction without colony isolation. The cell product demonstrates typical RPE phenotypes and functions. This method will be beneficial to the development AMD treatment with iPSC-derived RPE in the near future.
Funding Source: This work was supported by the University of Macau (File No. MYRG-GRG2024-00192-FHS) and by the Science and Technology Development Fund, Macau SAR (File No.0010/2023/AKP and 0002/2023/RIB1).
