Abstract
Purpose :
Age- and disease- related loss or dysfunction of human corneal endothelial cells (CECs) is a major cause of corneal blindness and requires transplantation of corneal endothelium, but facing the need for donor tissue. We propose that the use of CECs derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) offers a better solution to this challenge. The present study is aimed to induce differentiation of hiPSCs into CECs in chemically defined conditions.
Methods :
Derivation of corneal endothelial like cells from hiPSCs was achieved through a three-stage treatment of small-molecule compounds and growth factors under chemically defined conditions for five weeks. The resultant hiPSC-CECs were characterized at morphological, molecular and protein expression level.
Results :
The hiPSC-CECs resembled human CECs morphologically and began to express many function-related and structural markers of human CECs. Protein expression of Na+/K+ ATPase was lower in cell extracts derived from hiPSC-CECs compared to human CECs, which indicated differentiated cells were at fetal stage.
Conclusions :
A hiPSCs differentiation procedure towards human CECs was established and hiPSC-CECs resembled native human CECs in many important aspects. This study also provided novel insights into the crosstalk and molecular mechanisms of those signaling pathways during mammalian CECs development.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.