Abstract
Regenerative medicine has received a lot of attention as a novel strategy for injuries and diseases that are difficult to cure using current techniques. Cell production, which is vital for regenerative medicine, has undergone remarkable progress via breakthroughs in developmental biology and tissue engineering; currently, cell production requires numerous experimental operators performing manual, small-scale cell cultures. Other major obstacles for cell production and regenerative medicine include the variable quality of products based on the experimental procedure, the skills of operators, the level of labor required for production, and costs. Technological developments are required to overcome this, including automation instead of manual culture. Age-related macular regeneration (AMD) is a refractory ocular disease that causes severe deterioration in central vision due to senescence in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). Recently, we performed an autologous transplantation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell-derived RPE cell sheets and started clinical research on allografts from RPE cell suspensions differentiated from iPS cells. The use of regenerative therapies for AMD using iPS cell-derived RPE is expected to become more widespread. In the present study, human iPS cell-derived RPE cells were cultured to form RPE cell sheets using equipment with a closed culture module. The quality of the automated cultured RPE cell sheets was confirmed by comparing their morphological and biological properties with those of manually generated RPE cell sheets. As a result, machine-cultured RPE sheets displayed the same quality as manually cultured RPE sheets, showing that iPS cell-derived RPE cell sheets were successfully cultured by an automated process.
Highlights
Regenerative medicine is an innovative type of therapy that enables the restoration of severely damaged and/or diseased tissues that would be difficult to treat with conventional methods [1]
We developed a method for the generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell-derived retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cell sheets [8] and reported the successful autologous transplantation of an RPE cell sheet differentiated from iPS cells generated from skin fibroblasts in a patient with Age-related macular degeneration (AMD); the results showed that the transplanted sheet remained intact and functioned for one year after surgery [9]
The primary goal of this study was to achieve the machine-based culture of iPS cell-derived RPE cell sheets in a closed, automated cell culture system
Summary
Regenerative medicine is an innovative type of therapy that enables the restoration of severely damaged and/or diseased tissues that would be difficult to treat with conventional methods [1]. Cell and/or tissue products are conventionally prepared using manual cell culture by skilled experimental operators, which may result in products with inconsistent quality. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common disease that causes severe loss of vision in the elderly population and developed countries [2]. We developed a method for the generation of iPS cell-derived RPE cell sheets [8] and reported the successful autologous transplantation of an RPE cell sheet differentiated from iPS cells generated from skin fibroblasts in a patient with AMD; the results showed that the transplanted sheet remained intact and functioned for one year after surgery [9]
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