Modelling eye specification in human embryonic stem cells

人类胚胎干细胞的眼睛规范建模

• 批准号: BB/D014891/1
• 负责人: William Harris
• 金额: $ 30.08万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2006 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FD014891%2F1
• 关键词: Modelling; eye; specification; human; embryonic

In the human body, there are cells that can still grow, like skin or blood cells, and other that cannot, like brain cells. When cells die in the body, naturally or as a consequence of accident or disease, they can be substituted by new ones only if those cells that died belong to the kind of cells that can still grow. This is the reason why some diseases cannot be cured to date. One type of disease that cannot be treated is blindness due to the loss of eye cells responsible for the detection of the light and the transmission of that information to the brain. If those cells could be substituted by new ones, we could potentially cure some forms of blindness. The investigation that we propose here has the ultimate goal of producing cells able to take the place of cells lost in the retina, the part of the eye that receives the visual information and transmits it to the brain. To do so, we propose to use human embryonic cells with the ability of transforming into any type of cell of the body, which are called embryonic stem cells and which are already available for experimentation. The key to transform embryonic stem cells into the kind of cell you need is to treat them with the right molecular messengers that tell the cells what to do. In our previous research, we have characterised in animal model systems many of the messengers that are required to inform a cell that it has to become a retinal cell. The next step is to use this knowledge to direct the fate of human embryonic stem cells to produce the retinal cells that could be used to replace those lost because of disease.

在人体中，有些细胞仍然可以生长，例如皮肤或血细胞，而另一些细胞则不能生长，例如脑细胞。当细胞在体内自然死亡或由于事故或疾病而死亡时，只有那些死亡的细胞属于仍能生长的细胞，它们才能被新细胞取代。这就是为什么有些疾病至今无法治愈的原因。一种无法治疗的疾病是由于负责检测光并将信息传输到大脑的眼细胞丧失而导致失明。如果这些细胞可以被新细胞取代，我们就有可能治愈某些形式的失明。我们在此提出的研究的最终目标是产生能够替代视网膜中丢失的细胞的细胞，视网膜是眼睛接收视觉信息并将其传输到大脑的部分。为此，我们建议使用能够转化为身体任何类型细胞的人类胚胎细胞，这些细胞被称为胚胎干细胞，并且已经可用于实验。将胚胎干细胞转化为您需要的细胞类型的关键是用正确的分子信使来处理它们，告诉细胞该做什么。在我们之前的研究中，我们在动物模型系统中描述了许多通知细胞必须成为视网膜细胞所需的信使。下一步是利用这些知识来指导人类胚胎干细胞的命运，以产生可用于替代因疾病而损失的视网膜细胞。