A Single-Cell RNA-Seq Analysis Unravels The Heterogeniety Of Primary Cultured Human Corneal Endothelial Cells

Abstract

The primary culture of donor-derived human corneal endothelial cells (CECs) is a promising cell therapy. It confers the potential to treat multiple patients from a single donor, alleviating the global donor shortage. Nevertheless, this approach has limitations preventing its adoption, particularly culture protocols allow limited expansion of CECs and there is a lack of clear parameters to identify therapy-grade CECs. To address this limitation, a better understanding of the molecular changes arising from the primary culture of CECs is required. Using single- cell RNA sequencing on primary cultured CECs, we identify their variable transcriptomic fingerprint at the single cell level, provide a pseudo temporal reconstruction of the changes arising from primary culture, and suggest markers to assess the quality of primary CEC cultures. This research depicts a deep transcriptomic understanding of the cellular heterogeneity arising from the primary expansion of CECs and sets the basis for further improvement of culture protocols and therapies.