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Abstract

A variety of novel peptide-grafted hydrogels, of which peptides were derived from vitronectin (PQVTRGDVFTMP) or the laminin β4 chain (PMQKMRGDVFSP) were prepared in this study. The peptide-grafted hydrogels promoted the adhesion, proliferation, and colony formation of hiPSCs and maintained their pluripotency up to passage 5 under xeno-free conditions. We successfully generated RPE cells from hiPSCs on one of the most suitable xeno-free peptide-grafted hydrogels, KVN2CK (KGCGGKGG-PQVTRGDVFTMP), which derived from vitronectin, and confirmed the effect of these hiPSC-derived RPE cells in a rat retinal degeneration model (Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) rats) via subretinal transplantation, when we investigated functional improvements in vision in RCS rats after the transplantation of hPSC-derived RPE cells. Our novel peptide-grafted hydrogels provided a safe and robust platform for generating single-layer hiPSC-derived RPE cells under xeno-free conditions, which indicates the potential of these hydrogels for stem cell therapy for retinal degenerative diseases in future.

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Peptide, hydrogel, human pluripotent stem cell, retinal pigment epithelium, subretinal transplantation
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Author notes

Jun Liu, Qian Liu authors contributed equally to this work.

© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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