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Dissembled human tear glands that make a sound from a scientific movie. But in the Netherlands, functional tear glands that do not connect one’s eyes (or emotions) act in their own real-life drama.
Researchers from the Hubricate Institute and UMC Utrecht used stem cells to grow small tear glands in petri dishes that mimic the real thing. They hope that these so-called organoids can serve as samples to study how tears are produced from cells in human tear glands. The ultimate goal: to better understand and treat conditions such as dry eye disease or autoimmune disorder schizophrenia syndrome, as well as cancer of the tear gland.
“Hopefully, in the future, this type of organoid may also be transplantable in patients with nonfunctioning tear glands,” says Mary Benier-Halout, a doctoral candidate for the Hubricate Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research. She co-authored a study published in the Cell Stem Cell Journal on Tuesday that details the project.
Organoids, in vitro, susp de suspension, are made up of lots of stem cells, which eventually multiply, forming something like a real organ, such as the mini-brain, bladder, or, in this case, the glands located inside the upper eyelid. .
Tears or contingencies, the glands constantly supply fluid that wipes the surface of the eyes with each blink of an eye and then drains into the small corners of our upper and lower ids before inserting our tear ducts into the nose. In addition to showing emotion, the liquid helps to soothe the cornea and keep bacteria away, for eye health. Tear gland dysfunction can be annoying, causing itchy, stinging or burning sensations and sensitivity to light. But it can also be severe, leading to corneal abortion or ulcers or blindness in very severe cases.
Tear glands are made up of many types of cells. Glands grown from labs outside the Netherlands only cry in response to one type of chemical stimulus, such as ductal and neurotrenaline, a neurotransmitter that carries messages from our neurons to our tear glands.
Cells shed tears inside the organelle, causing it to become a balloon.
Marie Benier-Helout / Hubricate Institute
“Our eyes are always wet, like there are torn glands in a dish,” Banner-Helout says of the artificial glands. Benier-Helout Molecular Biologist works in the lab of Hans Cleavers, which focuses on making organoids for disease mingling and has previously reconstructed snake venom glands and rat tear glands.
It’s not like you go to a cleaver lab and see big teardrop-shaped drops floating in the air. The cells put tears inside the organelle, called the lumen. This causes the organoid to swell like a balloon, the size of which indicates how long the tear production and secretion lasts.
This is not the first time that scientists have created components of the human eye from stem cells. In 2018, a team from Johns Hopkins University created parts of the eyelid in hopes of better understanding how and why we developed a “tricromatic vision” – the ability to see in red, blue and green.
Dutch researchers acknowledge the limitations of their tear gland, as it is only one of the major cell types found in the gland. They say they ultimately wanted to develop a complete tear gland from an expanded array of cells that make it up, gaining a stronger understanding of how we form tears.
