NEI-funded research at Duke University used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to grow specialized blood vessel cells critical to retinal health for the first time, according to a report published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
When injected into mouse models of retinal disease, these retinal endothelial cells integrated into the damaged tissue to regenerate blood vessels and restore retinal function. Researchers also demonstrated these cells’ ability to form functional retinal vascular tissue in a lab-grown environment, providing a pathway to model and research various eye diseases.
The findings point toward the potential of using these retinal cells and models to develop new methods of impactful vision loss treatments and eye disorder research.
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Reference:
Lin, YY., Esswein, P., Ramirez, L. et al. Derivation of functional retinal endothelial cells from human pluripotent stem cells for therapeutics and modelling. Nat. Biomed. Eng (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-026-01712-9