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Unterreiner, V.

Publications and source records attributed to Unterreiner, V..

2 recordsLinked to original sources
bioRxiv2023

Cell type-focused compound screen in human organoids reveals molecules and pathways controlling cone photoreceptor death

Human organoids that mirror their corresponding organs in cell-type diversity present an opportunity to perform large-scale screens for compounds that protect disease-affected or damage healthy cell types. However, such screens have not yet been performed. Here, we generated 20,000 human retinal organoids with GFP-labeled cone photoreceptors. Since degeneration of cones is a leading cause of blindness, we induced cone death and screened 2,707 compounds with known targets, for those that saved cones or those that further damaged cones. We identified inhibitors of CK1 or MAPK11 that protected cones, HSP90 inhibitors that saved cones in the short term but damaged them in the longer term, and broad HDAC inhibition by many compounds that significantly damaged cones. This work provides a database for cone-damaging compounds and describes compounds that can be starting points to develop neuroprotection for cones in diseases such as macular degeneration.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2022

In silico labeling enables kinetic myelination assay in brightfield

Recent advances with deep neural networks have shown the feasibility of acquiring brightfield images with transmitted light and applying in-silico labeling to predict fluorescent images. We have developed a novel in-silico labeling method based on a generative adversarial network and outperforms the state-of-the-art Unet method in generating realistic fluorescent images and quantitatively recapitulating real staining signals, as demonstrated in a complex co-culture myelination assay. Furthermore, we have performed the assay in live mode with multiple kinetic points, applied in-silico labeling to predict fluorescent images from brightfield and quantified the kinetic phenotypic changes. Thus, the proposed approach provides a potential tool to study the kinetics of cellular phenotypic changes with brightfield imaging.

cell biology↗