Partial penetrating keratoplasty may fail for a number of reasons. By improved surgical technique, instrumentation, therapy, and methods of managing donor material some of these reasons are suppressed, thereby increasing the relative importance of the remainder. Hence post-graft membranes (PGMs) have come to occupy a high place in the pathology of corneal grafts (Rycroft, I965; Brown and Kitano...

Corneal keratoplasty (penetrating or lamellar) using cadaveric human tissue, is nowadays the main treatment for corneal endotelial dysfunctions. However, there is a worldwide shortage of donor corneas available for transplantation and about 53% of the world's population have no access to corneal transplantation. Generating a complete cornea by tissue engineering is still a tough goal, but an en...

PURPOSE To test whether adherens junction proteins are present in the epithelium and the endothelium of corneal equivalents. METHODS Corneal cell types were harvested from human eyes and grown separately. Stromal equivalents were constructed by seeding fibroblasts into a collagen gel on which epithelial and endothelial cells were added on each side. Alternatively, bovine endothelial cells wer...

The organization of type IV collagen in the unconventional basement membrane of the corneal endothelium (Descemet's membrane) was investigated in developing chicken embryos using anti-collagen mAbs. Both immunofluorescence histochemistry and immunoelectron microscopy were performed. In mature embryos (greater than 15 d of development), the type IV collagen of Descemet's membrane was present as ...

OBJECTIVE To report gene expression profiles of normal human corneal endothelium with microarray analysis and serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE). METHODS Corneal endothelium was removed from normal human corneas obtained from eye banks. Total RNA was isolated and SAGE analysis was performed. The same RNA source was used to construct a complementary DNA library that was hybridized to mi...

PURPOSE To study the growth regulation of bovine corneal endothelium, the effects of insulin and insulin-like growth factor-I on the expression of the c-fos proto-oncogene as well as on DNA synthesis were analyzed. Bovine corneal endothelial cells were also analyzed for the presence of insulin and insulin-like growth factor-I receptors. METHODS Indirect immunofluorescence was used to assess t...