A Validated Biorepository of Retina and Choroid Tissues for Gene Expression Studies

Research studies on pathologies affecting the posterior segment of the eye are usually carried out either in animal models or cell lines of human origin that mimic the molecular patterns occurring in the human retina–pigment epithelium–choroid (RPC) complex in vivo. As this is not always the case, we were prompted to validate a biorepository of RPC tissues for research purposes. A PubMed literature search on “retina,” “choroid,” “bio-bank,” or “biorepository” as keywords did not lead to any publication describing the collection and banking of samples from the RPC complex for research purposes. The possibility to obtain access to a validated collection of high quality human RPC tissues as starting material is likely to lead to more appropriate findings and treatments, which eventually may improve human ocular health. Here we show that when tissues are harvested (T 8.0) and express specific genes and mo...