Fight Aging!

I notice that the National Eye Institute (NEI) is launching a tissue engineering challenge of the sort pioneered by the Methuselah Foundation in recent years. You might recall the New Organ initiative and the various related research prizes offered for important advances in the generation of patient-matched organs to order. Since the Methuselah Foundation staff have been taking the approach of partnering with government bodies where possible, as in the case of NASA and the Vascular Tissue Challenge, I imagine they will be pleased to see other groups following their lead. The past ten to fifteen years of various research prizes and challenges have hopefully established this approach as a viable and useful addition to the more usual methods of allocating funds for research and development. Most of the data suggests it is highly efficient in terms of attracting investment, and can help to accelerate growth and interest in specific areas of research.

When it comes to tissue engineering the National Eye Institute is, as you might imagine, interested in structures within the eyes. They wish to promote greater efforts in the production of viable, working retinal tissue. At the moment, given the present limitations on the generation of blood vessel networks, all such functional tissue takes the form of small sections called organoids, perhaps a few millimeters in each dimension. Nutrients must reach cells by diffusion in the absence of capillaries, so the tissue cannot be much larger than this. The recipe for generating an organoid - the cell types, environment, timing, and molecular signals needed - is different for each form of tissue, and there are a lot of different forms of tissue in the human body. Thus a great many researchers are occupied in discovering the recipes needed for those tissues most of interest in medicine and research, and outside that list there is still a large number of projects awaiting someone with the time, funding, and knowledge needed to make progress.

The production of organoids is a valuable undertaking. It is a stepping stone towards the construction of full organs in the sense that (a) organoids can help to make research faster and more cost-efficient in many areas of medicine, (b) the recipe for their production will be needed in order to build complete organs as and when the blood vessel network problem is solved, and (c) in a few cases, for organs that are essentially chemical factories and for which shape and location are not so important, organoids might already be the basis for useful transplant therapies. This last item is probably not going to be the case for retinal organoids, but you never know.

NIH launches competition to develop human eye tissue in a dish

The National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, has opened the first stage of a federal prize competition designed to generate miniature, lab-grown human retinas. The retina is the light- sensitive tissue in the back of the eye. Over the next three years pending availability of funds, NEI plans to offer more than $1 million in prize money to spur development of human retina organoids. "None of the model systems currently available to researchers match the complex architecture and functionality of the human retina. We are looking for new ideas to create standardized, reproducible 3-D retina organoids that can speed the discovery of treatments for diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and diabetic eye disease, both leading causes of blindness."

Research models are more valuable the more closely they mimic human tissue. Researchers hope to use retina organoids to study how retinal cells interact under healthy and diseased conditions, and to test potential therapies. The ideation stage of the 3-D Retina Organoid Challenge aims to generate innovative ideas that can later be turned into concrete concepts. Running until August 1, 2017, the total prize purse for the ideation stage is $100,000. "We're looking for creative insights and application of new technology to unleash the full potential of retinal organoids. Our goal is for researchers to be able to generate or obtain retinal organoids easily so that they can be widely used for understanding diseases and testing drugs. To do this, we are encouraging entries from diverse teams of participants."

The development stage of the challenge will require demonstration of a functional retina organoid prototype. This stage is planned to launch in fall 2017 and expected to offer $1 million in prize money. Full details of the 3-D Retina Organoid Challenge prize competition are available online.