Corneal transplantation has evolved rapidly over the past decade, as surgeons strive to refine selective tissue transplantation to treat diseases that affect specific layers of the cornea. The first successful penetrating corneal transplantation was performed by Eduard Zirm in 1905. In 1931, Ramon Castroviejo, MD, while a fellow at Mayo Clinic, refined the techniques for penetrating keratoplast...

Corneal transplantation is the most used therapy for eye disorders. Although the cornea is somewhat an immune privileged organ, immune rejection is still the major problem that reduces the success rate. Therefore, effective chemical drugs that regulate immunoreactions are needed to improve the outcome of corneal transplantations. Here, a sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 1 (S1P1) selective agoni...

OBJECTIVE To report the use of preserved amniotic membrane and living related corneal limbal/conjunctival transplantation in total limbal stem cell and conjunctival deficiency secondary to severe Stevens-Johnson syndrome. DESIGN Prospective, noncomparative, interventional case series. PATIENTS AND METHODS Ten eyes of 10 patients with total limbal stem cell and conjunctival deficiency second...

PURPOSE To determine the fate of donor epithelial, stromal, and endothelial cells after corneal transplantation in humans. METHODS Fifty-two transplanted corneal buttons were explanted over a 2-year period from patients who required regrafting and had received corneas from donors of opposite sex. Fluorescence in situ hybridization of the sex chromosomes of the epithelial, stromal, and endothe...

This review outlines the main features of clinical trials where cultivated oral mucosa epithelial cell transplantation (COMET) was performed, aiming to underscore a link between outcome and expression specific markers during follow-up patients, characteristic for defined epithelium (cornea, mucosa, or conjunctiva) related vascularization. Currently, little is known about reasons underlying succ...

Corneal epithelium is traditionally thought to be a self-sufficient, self-renewing tissue implying that its stem cells are located in its basal cell layer. Recent studies indicate however that corneal epithelial stem cells reside in the basal layer of peripheral cornea in the limbal zone, and that corneal and conjunctival epithelia represent distinct cell lineages. These ideas are supported by ...

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-G retains the capacity to modulate immune responses, favoring the establishment of tolerance in solid-tissue allotransplants. To better understand the mechanisms that promote corneal allograft survival, we investigated whether HLA-G was an immunoregulatory factor involved in corneal immunology. We therefore sought HLA-G expression in corneal tissues. Corneal transp...

PURPOSE To evaluate the function of cultured human corneal endothelial cells (HCECs) in vivo and the feasibility of HCEC transplantation with a collagen sheet as the substitute carrier of HCECs. METHODS Adult human donor cornea derived from cultured HCECs was labeled with the fluorescent tracker DiI (1,1'-dioctadecyl-3,3,3',3'-tetramethylindocarbocyanine perchlorate) and seeded on a collagen ...

The two main issues that concern glaucoma patients before and after penetrating keratoplasty and posterior lamellar procedures and patients that develop glaucoma after surgery are the risks of graft failure and the aggravation of the glaucoma. Failure of the corneal graft may require regrafting, which increases the risk of developing or aggravating glaucoma, while uncontrolled glaucoma may resu...

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a linear polysaccharide naturally found in the eye and therefore is one of the most promising biomaterials for corneal endothelial regenerative medicine. This study reports, for the first time, the development of overrun-processed porous HA hydrogels for corneal endothelial cell (CEC) sheet transplantation and tissue engineering applications. The hydrogel carriers were c...