QobuR – A new in vitro human corneal epithelial model for preclinical drug screening
Authors
Manuel Chacón, Natalia Vázquez, Silvia Berisa, Mairobi Persinal, Manuel Sánchez, Begoña Baamonde, Jose F. Alfonso, Luis Fernández-Vega Cueto, Jesús Merayo-Lloves, Álvaro Meana
Institution
Universidad de Oviedo
Country
Spain
Year
2019
Journal
European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics
Abstract
A new in vitro human corneal epithelial model (QobuR) obtained from normal limbal tissue has been developed to study ocular irritancy of different ophthalmic compounded drugs. Phenotypical characterization and trans-epithelial electrical resistance (TEER) of QobuR revealed essential similarities compared with a native human cornea, displaying functional markers and TEER values near 1500 Ωcm2 at day 7th of cellular differentiation. Using this model, ocular irritancy and barrier integrity alterations were evaluated using MTT reaction and variations in TEER. We found that some of the Non-Irritant products evaluated still damage the corneal epithelial integrity and current protocols for ocular irritancy should therefore include a barrier integrity evaluation. Moreover, in order to comprehensively evaluate corneal permeability of the active ingredients, we propose the use of QobuR as an all-in-one alternative method for evaluating ocular irritancy, barrier disruptions and permeability rates of topically applied ocular drugs to improve current in vitro drug testing procedures.