Retina on a chip
"Retina-on-a-chip" will help in the study of eye diseases
Scientists from Germany have created a "retina-on-a-chip" that combines living human cells with an artificial tissue-like system. This tool can be a good alternative to existing models for studying eye diseases. It will also allow scientists to test the effects of drugs on the retina more effectively, Fraunhofer IGB Retina-on-a-chip provides a powerful tool for studying eye disease, according to a press release. Article by Achberger et al. Merging organoid and organ-on-a-chip technology to generate complex multi-layer tissue models in a human Retina-on-a-Chip platform is published on the eLife website.
Many diseases that cause blindness are associated with damage to the retina, the thin inner lining of the eye that helps collect light and transmit visual information to the brain. The retina is also vulnerable to the harmful side effects of medications that are used to treat other diseases, such as cancer. Currently, to study eye diseases and side effects of drugs, scientists are conducting experiments with animals or retinal organoids – tiny mesh-like structures grown from human stem cells. But the results of studies on both models often do not accurately describe the effects of the disease and drugs in humans.
To overcome these difficulties, scientists have tried to recreate the retina in the laboratory. To do this, they forced human pluripotent stem cells to turn into several different types of retinal cells on artificial tissue. This tissue recreates the environment familiar to cells and delivers nutrients and drugs to the cells through a system that mimics human blood vessels.
"This combination of approaches allowed us to successfully create a complex multilayer structure that includes all cell types and layers present in retinal organoids connected to a layer of retinal pigment epithelium," notes Kevin Achberger, one of the study leaders, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Neuroanatomy and Developmental Biology at Eberhard and Karl University (Germany). "This is the first three–dimensional model of the retina that recreates many of the structural characteristics of the retina of the human eye and behaves in a similar way."
The team tested how the anti-malaria drug chloroquine and the antibiotic gentamicin, which are toxic to the inner lining of the eye, will act on the "retina-on-a-chip". The drugs also had a toxic effect on the cells of the artificial retina. This allowed scientists to conclude that their development can be used as a tool for testing drugs for side effects. Another advantage of "retina-on-a-chip": scientists can take stem cells from a specific patient and study both the disease and potential treatments in that person's own cells.
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