Tissue Engineering Strategies for Retina Regeneration
, Juan Carlos Martinez Camarillo 1,4, Mark S. Humayun 1,4 and Biju B. Thomas 1,4,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is well written and manuscript summarizes the recent advances. However, the title could be changed to RPE regeneration as the paper is focused on the status of RPE based retinal regeneration.
Author Response
Reviewer 1 has suggested to consider including retinal pigment epithelial cells in the title. We agree that there is more focus on RPEs as the clinical trials are based on them. But, we also intended to point out the emerging advancements in the use of photoreceptors, retinal progenitor cells, retinal organoids and retinal pigment epithelium+ retinal organoid cograft. Considering this review as a comprehensive discussion enlisting all the candidate cells used for preclinical studies we did not include RPE in the title.
The current title is ‘Tissue engineering strategies for retinal regeneration’. We believe this title is appropriate since in addition to RPE, discussion include photoreceptors, retinal progenitor cells, retinal organoids and retinal piment epithelium+ retinal organoid cografts. Based on cograft implantation, some unpublished data is also included.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments to the Author
This is a good review with detailed summary of the current advance in tissue engineering techniques designed for the retinal regeneration. Overall, the review is well structured and written, logical and easy to follow. The topic of the tissue engineering is extremely important as a promising approach for the treatment of the retinal degenerative diseases at the moment so this article would certainly be of high interest to the field of eye research and other audience of this journal.
The following comments aim to improve the readability and the quality of this manuscript:
1) page 3 line 91-94, there is another paper with a well described protocol to generate photoreceptor precursors: Zerti D. et al. Stem Cells. 2020 Jan; 38(1): 45–51. Published online 2019 Oct 31. doi: 10.1002/stem.3082 PMCID: PMC7004057
2) Page 3 line 105-106, the same group have also recently upload another interesting paper where they show the grafted cells integration with some recovery of visual function in the transplanted mice (bioRxiv 2020.09.22.308726; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.22.308726), I think it should be cited.
Both these papers are quite recent, so they should be included in their citation acknowledging the contribution to the area of the stem cells transplantation.
3) It would be worthwhile to include some tables as a summary of the section 4 entitled “ biomaterials and scaffolds used for tissue engineering”. I suggest to include in the table the characteristics of scaffolds described such as: material, thickness, composition, rate of degradation, potential application, advantages and\or disadvanges, assesment in vitro and\or in vivo, ect… with the proper refs.
4) Page 9, Figure 3 legend is not well written and it is a bit difficult and confusing follow the text with the images, please re-write the section related to the IHC and the OCT images. It is also missing the permission to use that images in pane b and c, please add it.
Author Response
- Based on the reviewer’s suggestion “Developing a simple method to enhance the generation of ………..” Ref no-41 is now included in Page 9
- We included the article “Transplanted pluripotent stem cell-derived photoreceptor precursors elicit conventional and unusual …….” in Page 3, Ref no 52
- The reviewer suggested the need for a new table to summarise section 4. We added a new table entitled ‘A summary of biomaterials used for retinal tissue engineering’ in Page 9.
- The reviewer asked to rewrite the legend of Figure 3. The Figure Legend is now modified as per the reviewer's suggestion.
