TY  - JOUR
A1  - Waxman, Susannah
A1  - Strzalkowska, Alicja
A1  - Wang, Chao
A1  - Loewen, Ralitsa
A1  - Dang, Yalong
A1  - Loewen, Nils A.
T1  - Tissue-engineered anterior segment eye cultures demonstrate hallmarks of conventional organ culture
JF  - Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology
N2  - Background
Glaucoma is a blinding disease largely caused by dysregulation of outflow through the trabecular meshwork (TM), resulting in elevated intraocular pressure (IOP). We hypothesized that transplanting TM cells into a decellularized, tissue-engineered anterior segment eye culture could restore the outflow structure and function.

Methods
Porcine eyes were decellularized with freeze–thaw cycles and perfusion of surfactant. We seeded control scaffolds with CrFK cells transduced with lentiviral vectors to stably express eGFP and compared them to scaffolds seeded with primary TM cells as well as to normal, unaltered eyes. We tracked the repopulation behavior, performed IOP maintenance challenges, and analyzed the histology.

Results
Transplanted cells localized to the TM and progressively infiltrated the extracellular matrix, reaching a distribution comparable to normal, unaltered eyes. After a perfusion rate challenge to mimic a glaucomatous pressure elevation, transplanted and normal eyes reestablished a normal intraocular pressure (transplanted = 16.5 ± 0.9 mmHg, normal = 16.9 ± 0.9). However, eyes reseeded with eGFP-expressing CrFK cells could not regulate IOP, remaining high and unstable (27.0 ± 6.2 mmHg) instead.

Conclusion
Tissue-engineered anterior segment scaffolds can serve as readily available, scalable ocular perfusion cultures. This could reduce dependency on scarce donor globes in outflow research and may allow engineering perfusion cultures with specific geno- and phenotypes.
KW  - ocular anterior segment perfusion culture
KW  - tissue engineering
KW  - aqueous humor outflow
KW  - trabecular meshwork
Y1  - 2023
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-323845
VL  - 261
IS  - 5
ER  -