Retinal organoid chip: engineering a physiomimetic oxygen gradient for optimizing long term culture of human retinal organoids
Emma Drabbe, Daniel Pelaez, Ashutosh Agarwal
Abstract
, and retrieved. ROC was designed from first principles of liquid and gas mass transport, and fabricated from biologically- and chemically inert materials using rapid prototyping techniques such as micromachining, laser cutting, 3D printing and bonding. After computational and experimental validation of oxygen gradients, human induced pluripotent stem cell derived retinal organoids were transferred into the ROC, differentiated, cultured and imaged within the chip. ROCs that maintained active perfusion and stable oxygen gradients were successful in inducing higher viability of RGCs within retinal organoids than static controls, or ROC without oxygen gradients. Our physiologically relevant and higher-throughput retinal organoid culture system is well suited for applications in studying developmental perturbations to primate retinogenesis, including those driven by inherited traits, fetal environmental exposure to toxic agents, or acquired by genetic mutations, such as retinoblastoma.