World’s First Successful iPSC Corneal Transplant at Osaka University Matrixome’s iMatrix-511MG* contributes to “transplant of corneal epithelial cell sheet prepared from iPS cells to a patient” Osaka University has announced “the the first case of the world’s first transplant of a corneal epithelial cell sheet prepared from iPS cells”. (link to announcement)

September 2, 2019 A Japanese woman in her forties has become the first person in the world to have her cornea repaired using reprogrammed stem cells. At a press conference on 29 August, ophthalmologist Kohji Nishida from Osaka University, Japan, said the woman has a disease in which the stem cells that repair the cornea, a transparent layer that covers and protects the eye, are lost. The condition makes vision blurry and can lead to blindness. To treat the woman, Nishida says his team created sheets of corneal cells from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. These are made by reprogramming adult skin cells from a donor into an embryonic-like state from which they can transform into other cell types, such as corneal cells. Nishida said that the woman’s cornea remained clear and her vision had improved since the transplant a month ago. Currently people with damaged or diseased corneas are generally treated using tissue from donors who have died, but there is a long waiting list for such tissue in Japan… By David Cyranoski Nature.com Link to full article

iMatrix-511 is used as a scaffold protein to coat the culture substrate when maintaining and expanding iPS cells. However, there are other cells that use iMatrix-511 as a scaffold in addition to iPS cells with corneal epithelial being such an example. The corneal epithelial cell sheet used for this specific transplantation used Matrixome’s technology, specifically iMatrix-511MG which is approved by the Japanese government for use in clinical research and applications. * iMatrix-511MG: A high-purity purified product of laminin-511E8 fragment, clinical grade product that meets the criteria of biological materials.

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Related Reference Papers for iMatrix-511  Co-ordinated ocular development from human iPS cells and recovery of corneal function Ryuhei Hayashi et al. Nature. 2016 Mar 17; 531(7594):376-80. PMID: 26958835 Selective Laminin-Directed Differentiation of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells into Distinct Ocular Lineages Shun Shibata et al. Cell Rep. 2018 Nov 6; 25(6):1668-1679.e5. PMID: 30404017 Coordinated generation of multiple ocular-like cell lineages and fabrication of functional corneal epithelial cell sheets from human iPS cells. Ryuhei Hayashi et al.　Nat Protoc. 2017 Apr; 12(4):683-696. PMID: 28253236 Cell-Type-Specific Adhesiveness and Proliferation Propensity on Laminin Isoforms Enable Purification of iPSC-Derived Corneal Epithelium. Shibata, Shun, et al.　Stem Cell Reports. 2020 Apr 14; 14(4):663-676. PMID: 32197114

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