Researchers at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (UCL GOS ICH) have grown ‘mini eyes’, which make it possible to study and better understand the development of blindness in a rare genetic disease called Usher syndrome for the first time. The 3D ‘mini eyes’, known as organoids, were grown from stem cells generated from skin samples donated by patients at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH). In a healthy eye, rod cells the cells which detect light are arranged in the back of the eye in an important region responsible for processing images called the retina. In this research, published in Stem Cell Reports1, the team found that they could get rod cells to organise themselves into layers that mimic their organisation in the retina, producing a ‘mini eye’.
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