For Lab Research Use Only, Not for Human or Animal Therapeutic Use.
Vision loss can be caused by multiple complications which involve one or more ocular degenerative diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), retinitis pigmentosa (RP), and glaucoma, which is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss in developed countries. According to recorded prevalence and UN World Population Prospect data, AMD, the leading cause of sight loss in developed countries will affecting 196 million people worldwide in 2020.
Damage or degeneration of any part of the retina is permanent and irreversible, pathological molecular/cellular mechanism isn’t fully clear to date. The major barrier may be lacking access to in vitro models that can reflect the natural progression and phenotype of ocular degenerative diseases, to explore molecular pathological mechanism and discover new drug and methods. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are generated by forcing expression of a defined set of transcription factors to reprogram somatic cells into an embryonic pluripotent state, and share the self-renewal and pluripotency characteristics that can be induced to differentiate into multiple types of retinal cells. The emerging technology of disease-specific iPSC-derived disease models bridge the gap between clinical phenotype and molecular/cellular mechanisms, facilitating new strategies for drug screening, and developing novel therapeutic agents for clinical trials. An increasing number of researches have explored the utility of iPSCs to model a variety of degenerative diseases affecting different retinal cell types, including retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) and photoreceptors. Creative Biolabs provides a series of patient-specific iPSC models of ocular degenerative diseases for different research demands of worldwide clients.
Fig 1. Drug discovery pipeline using iPSC.
By combination with other promising technologies in tissue engineering and gene edition, iPSC-derived ocular disease models have huge potential in exploring ocular degenerative disease’s pathological mechanisms, as well as application in drug discovery/screening, toxicology testing and estimating regenerative medicine/methods.
Differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) into the retinal cell lineages, including retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) and photoreceptors, is a multistep process, during which multipotent retinal progenitors produce and then generate RGCs, RPE and photoreceptors by different pathways of differentiation.
Fig 2. Schematic of effect of select signaling molecules on specific stages of PSC photoreceptor differentiation in vitro.
Human PSC-retinal cell (hPSC-RC) models of inherited ocular degenerative diseases are used to investigate the underlying disease mechanisms and evaluate therapeutic options in a patient-specific manner. Creative Biolabs offers a state-of-the-art STEMODTM ocular disease models platform which provides a list of hPSC-RC models with accurate evaluated retinal cell phenotypes. These ocular degenerative disease models are prepared for various disease types including POGA, BEST disease, AMD and retinitis pigmentosa. If the desired disease models for your research are not found in the product list, please contact us and the customized service can also be provided for you!
References
For Lab Research Use Only, Not for Human or Animal Therapeutic Use.
For Lab Research Use Only, Not for Human or Animal Therapeutic Use.