Abstract
Presentation Description :
Tissue organoids have become powerful tools to probe specific cellular functions, interactions and underlying mechanisms in health and disease. Human iPS cells grown under low attachment, hypoxic conditions were treated to differentiation programs that support neural induction. A fraction of the developing optic vesicles lacked pigmented cells and developed into translucent organoids. We characterized these organoids and found these to harbor key features of the multi-layered cornea. Thus, the cornea-organoids expressed epithelial markers, KRT14, KRT3, p63, stromal markers, lumican, keratocan, collagen types I and V, and endothelial collagen type VIII. Most importantly, by TEM we detected collagen fibrils with characteristic organization and stacking that suggest expansion of a corneal stromal matrix. These cornea organoids will be used to study matrix assembly, cell-matrix interactions and the effects of specific genetic alterations on these processes.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.