Directed Induction of Retinal Organoids from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Retinal cell transplantation is a promising therapeutic approach, which could restore the retinal architecture and stabilize or even improve the visual capabilities to the degenerated retina. Nevertheless, progress in cell replacement therapy presently faces the challenges of requiring an off-the-shelf source of high quality and standardized human retinas. Therefore, an easy and stable protocol is needed for the experiments. Here, we develop an optimized protocol, based on a self-organizing method with the use of exogenous molecules and reagent A as well as manual excision to generate the three-dimensional human retina organoids (RO). The human Pluripotent Stem Cells (PSCs)-derived RO expresses specific markers for photoreceptors. With the addition of COCO, a multifunctional antagonist, the differentiation efficiency of photoreceptor precursors and cones is significantly increased. The efficient use of this system, which has the benefits of cell lines and primary cells, and without the sourcing issues associated with the latter, could produce confluent retinal cells, especially photoreceptors. Thus, the differentiation of PSCs to RO provides an optimal and biorelevant platform for disease modelling, drug screening and cell transplantation.