Dr Jorn Lakowski is part of the Vision Science group, headed by Professor Andrew Lotery, interested in understanding retinal development and the molecular causes of inherited retinal diseases in order to develop new therapeutic applications.

They use “human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) derived retinal organoids” and have mini retinas grown from scratch and during their differentiation they fully recapitulate human retinal development. They have a very similar composition and organisation as the in vivo counterpart and are also at the later stages light sensitive as you would expect for a retina.

In conjunction with the hPSC system, they conduct genome engineering using CRISPR/Cas9 in order to generate knockout models for genes of interest or generate fluorescent reporter hPSC lines. They have a genetically tractable human model system for the retina. But as the retina is part of the brain and the differentiation protocols are similar, they could also make cerebral or other forebrain organoids.