Morphological comparison between three-dimensional structure of immortalized human lens epithelial cells and Soemmering's ring.

The incidence rate of post-cataract surgery posterior capsule opacification (PCO) and lens turbidity is about 20% in 5 years. Soemmering's ring, which is a type of PCO also called a regenerated lens with similar tissue structure to that of a human lens, is an important proxy for elucidating the mechanism of lens regeneration and maintenance of transparency. The authors created new human immortalized crystalline lens epithelial cells (iHLEC-NY1s) with excellent differentiation potential, and as a result of culturing the cells by static and rotation-floating methods, succeeded in producing a three-dimensional cell structure model (3D-iHLEC-NY1s) which is similar to Soemmering's ring in tissue structure and expression characteristics of αA-crystalline, βB2-crystalline, vimentin proteins. 3D-iHLEC-NY1s is expected to be a proxy in vitro experimental model of Soemmering's ring to enable evaluation of drug effects on suppression of cell aggregate formation and transparency. By further improving the culture conditions, we aim to control the cell sequence and elucidate the mechanism underlying the maintenance of lens transparency.