Photo credit: Elke Gabriel
What might sound like something from a science fiction or horror movie is actually a real experiment that was conducted by a group of researchers. That’s right, human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be used to generate brain organoids that develop an eye structure called the optic cup. These three-dimensional tissue cultures spontaneously develop bilaterally symmetric optic cups from the front of the brain-like region.
These 3D brain organoids derived from pluripotent stem cells are used to study human brain development and diseases. In the past, researchers used human embryonic stem cells to generate the optic cup, which gives rise to the retina—the light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye. Out of 16 independent batches from four iPSC donors, the researchers managed to generate 314 brain organoids, 72% of which formed optic cups.
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Our work highlights the remarkable ability of brain organoids to generate primitive sensory structures that are light sensitive and harbor cell types similar to those found in the body. These organoids can help to study brain-eye interactions during embryo development, model congenital retinal disorders, and generate patient-specific retinal cell types for personalized drug testing and transplantation therapies,” said Jay Gopalakrishnan, senior study author of University Hospital Düsseldorf.
