摘要
The scarcity of human donor corneal graft tissue worldwide available for corneal transplantation necessitates the development of alternative therapeutic strategies for treating patients with corneal blindness.Corneal stromal stem cells(CSSCs)have the potential to address this global shortage by allowing a single donor cornea to treat multiple patients.To directly deliver CSSCs to corneal defects within an engineered biomatrix,we developed a UNIversal Orthogonal Network(UNION)collagen bioink that crosslinks in situ with a bioorthogonal,covalent chemistry.This cell-gel therapy is optically transparent,stable against contraction forces exerted by CSSCs,and permissive to the efficient growth of corneal epithelial cells.Furthermore,CSSCs remain viable within the UNION collagen gel precursor solution under standard storage and transportation conditions.This approach promoted corneal transparency and re-epithelialization in a rabbit anterior lamellar keratoplasty model,indi-cating that the UNION collagen bioink serves effectively as an in situ-forming,suture-free therapy for delivering CSSCs to corneal wounds.
基金
supported by the National Science Foundation,grants DGE-165618(L.G.B.),DMR-2103812(S.C.H.),DMR-2427971(S.C.H.),and CBET-2033302(S C H)
the National Institutes of Health,grants F31-EY034785(L G B),F31-EY030731(S.M.H.),R01-EY035697(S C H.,D.M.),R01-EY033363(D.M.),and P30-EY026877(D.M.)
the ARCS Foundation Scholarship(L.G.B.)
the Stanford Bio-X Interdisci-plinary Graduate Fellowship(B.C.,S.M.H.)
the Stanford Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program(B.C.)
and a departmental core grant from Research to Prevent Blindness(D.M.).
