Tissue/cell Culture Assays for Retina

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editors

Zhongjie Fu

Ophthalmology, Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. Boston, MA, United States

Dr. Zhongjie Fu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology, Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. Her research interest focuses on the nutrient deficiency and metabolic modulations in retinal disorders, including retinopathy of prematurity, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. Their work addresses the contribution of glucose/lipid metabolic disturbance to neuronal changes and the inhibition of normal vessel growth as well as promotion of neovascularization in hyperglycemia-associated retinopathy with vessel growth cessation and hypoxia-induced proliferative retinopathy. They have found that abnormal glucose metabolism caused photoreceptor dysfunction, retinal oxidative stress, inflammation, as well as glial responses, resulting in damaged retinal neurons and disturbed retinal vasculature. Targeting retinal glucose/lipid metabolism may be important in the treatment of retinal metabolic disorders.

Jing Bai

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States

Dr Bai is currently a Research Scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her major research interests focus on Organ-on-a-chip, Microfluidics, and Cancer/vascular microenvironment. She obtained her B.Eng and PhD in Bioengineering from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Later she became a postdoctoral fellow in MIT and Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where she developed several microfluidic models for recapitulating the 3D cellular micro-environment to analyze the role of vasculature and macrophages in cancer progression, to examine drug delivery via eye-on-a-chip assays and to study angiogenic responses from various genetic backgrounds of mice.

Yan Gong

Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

Dr. Yan Gong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Repositories, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University. His research interest focuses on the regulation of angiogenesis in multiple neovascular diseases, including retinopathy of prematurity, proliferative diabetic retinopathy and wet age-related macular degeneration. His work contributed to establish and optimize the laser-induced choroidal neovascularization in vivo rodent model for age-related macular degeneration study using a novel image-guided laser system, and to screen drugs using this new model. He investigated the roles of lipids and their metabolites in retinal disorders using oxygen- or streptozotocin-induced retinopathy animal models utilizing mass spectrometry and cellular bioenergetics analytical instruments. His studies initiated several interdisciplinary collaborations to determine complex mechanisms of action with a quantitative comparative transcriptional profiling technique and to develop new surrogate markers for eye diseases.

Collection Overview

In vitro culture is a powerful tool for the phenotypic and mechanistic study of retinal function and cellular activities. Classical 2D primary endothelial cell function assays such as proliferation assays, tubule formation assays, and wound healing assays have been widely used in research fields, although the isolation of primary retinal endothelial cells is still technically challenging. In addition to endothelial cells, photoreceptors, retinal glial cells and ganglion cells have also been cultured in vitro to demonstrated their tight interactions with endothelial cells, but there is still a lack of advanced protocols to isolate such cells. Recently, more complex cell culture assays are required, such as organoids. They are generated from either pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) or adult stem cells (ASCs), which retain the geometric and developmental features of the retina. Thus, they present as effective in vitro models to recapitulate developmental and disease processes in the retina and to test pharmaceutical compounds. To further mimic the cellular microenvironment in vivo, microfluidic-based organ-on-a-chip assays with simultaneous coculture of multi-cell types have been established and applied in retinal studies. The field has also advanced with 3D tissue explant models such as choroidal sprouting assays and retinal explants ex vivo to better mimic the in vivo conditions. Within the scope of this collection, articles will explore these novel cell culture assays to address the physiological and pathological problems in the retina.