Shaping the eye from embryonic stem cells: Biological and medical implications

Organogenesis is regulated by a complex network of intrinsic cues, diffusible signals and cell/cell or cell/matrix interactions that drive the cells of a prospective organ to differentiate and collectively organize in three dimensions. Generating organs in vitro from embryonic stem (ES) cells may provide a simplified system to decipher how these processes are orchestrated in time and space within particular and between neighboring tissues. Recently, this field of stem cell research has also gained considerable interest for its potential applications in regenerative medicine. Among human pathologies for which stem cell-based therapy is foreseen as a promising therapeutic strategy are many retinal degenerative diseases, like retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration. Over the last decade, progress has been made in producing ES-derived retinal cells in vitro, but engineering entire synthetic retinas was considered beyond reach. Recently however, major breakthroughs have been achieved with pioneer works describing the extraordinary self-organization of murine and human ES cells into a three dimensional structure highly resembling a retina. ES-derived retinal cells indeed assemble to form a cohesive neuroepithelial sheet that is endowed with the intrinsic capacity to recapitulate, outside an embryonic environment, the main steps of retinal morphogenesis as observed in vivo. This represents a tremendous advance that should help resolving fundamental questions related to retinogenesis. Here, we will discuss these studies, and the potential applications of such stem cell-based systems for regenerative medicine.