In Vitro Histogenesis of Human Embryonic Stem Cells into Retina Components

1N. I. Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; 2Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia. Address for correspondence: maryalag@yahoo.com. M. A. Lagar’kova Cell therapy, in particular, transplantation of retinal neuroepithelium, can be a principally new approach to the therapy of retinal degeneration diseases. Transplantation of the retina is extremely rarely used because of the absence of standardized and renewable source of the tissue for transplantation. Human pluripotent SC can be a source of any human tissue and in case of creation of the technology of their targeted differentiation in vitro and selection can become a unique standardized source of cell and tissues for transplantation. Two types of human pluripotent cells are known: embryonic SC (ESC) and induced pluripotent SC [10]. There are reports on the development of ESC differentiation protocols into pigment retinal epithelial cells [1-5] and photoreceptor cells [6,9], but the possibility of controlled differentiation of this three-dimensional and multicomponent tissue remains an open question. Here we analyze three-dimensional structures similar to developing eye retina, which were differentiated in vitro from human ESC.