NL
DE
Corneal damage is a significant cause of blindness, ranked fourth worldwide. Without proper treatment, affected individuals are at risk of losing their vision. Current corneal transplantation therapies are not optimal, as they are limited by the availability of stem cells from the patient's other healthy eye or donor corneas.
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC), which are created from a person’s own tissues, can potentially regenerate corneal stem cells, offering a path to personalized treatment. Despite the potential, hiPSC are notorious, known for their differentiation inconsistency. This makes the regeneration process time consuming and costly, and has been a major obstacle in making personalized corneal therapies widely accessible.
In a collaborative study by the Skottman (Tampere University, Finland) and Zhou (Radboud University, Radboudumc) research teams, single-cell RNA sequencing was performed to examine how different hiPSC lines develop into corneal stem cells. By identifying the specific markers that indicate successful differentiation into corneal stem cells, this study provides a reliable method to consistently generate high-quality stem cells. This research marks a significant step forward towards creating effective personalized therapy for corneal damage. This work is recently published in Stem Cell Report.
Read the publication here: Deciphering the heterogeneity of differentiating hPSC-derived corneal limbal stem cells through single-cell RNA sequencing: Stem Cell Reports
