PURPOSE Limbal stem cell deficiency is a challenging clinical problem and the current treatment involves replenishing the depleted limbal stem cell (LSC) pool by either limbal tissue transplantation or use of cultivated limbal epithelial cells (LEC). Our experience of cultivating the LEC on denuded human amniotic membrane using a feeder cell free method, led to identification of mesenchymal cel...

tissue and cell transplantation are regarded as a popular procedure in clinical sciences, prospecting a new horizon for several incurable diseases. along with its usefulness, many ethical concerns accompany this development. the ethical issue of organ transplant is unique to the source used which includes: living related, living unrelated, cadaveric, and xenotransplant. obtaining organs has a s...

objective: to study the effects of different matrices and co-culture systems on cultured limbal stem cells (lscs). materials and methods: limbal explants were co-cultured with limbal fibroblasts (lf) and/or mouse embryonic fibroblasts (mef) on filter inserts coated with amniotic membrane (am), matrigel (mat) and collagen type i (col). results: this study revealed that am facilitated the cell mi...

The purpose of our review was to familiarize the readers with the new concepts in ocular surface diseases and reconstruction. Limbal stem cell deficiency is characterized by the progressive invasion of conjunctival epithelial cells onto the cornea, superficial vascularisation, destruction of the corneal basement membrane, and chronic inflammatory cell infiltration. Depending on the severity of ...

Limbal epithelial stem cells play a key role in the maintenance and regulation of the corneal surface. Damage or destruction of these cells results in vascularisation and corneal opacity. Subsequent limbal stem cell transplantation requires an ex vivo expansion step and preserving cells in an undifferentiated state remains vital. In this report we seek to control the phenotype of limbal epithel...