Stem Cells for Ocular Tissue Engineering and Regeneration

Radhakrishna      Gopala Pillai

Abstract

With advances in stem cell biology, tissue engineering is becoming increasingly powerful for tissue regeneration. Stem cells with capacity of multilineage and self-renewal are an ideal cell source for tissue engineering. This review focus on discussing the potential strategies including stem cell sources, bio-scaffolds, mechanical stimulation, genetic modification and co-culture techniques to direct ocular-lineage differentiation of stem cells for complete or partial eye regeneration and research. Attempts to use embryonic and somatic stem cells as seed cells for ocular tissue engineering have achieved encouraging results. The combination of chemical and physical signals in stem cell microenvironment could be regulated to induce differentiation of the embryonic stem cells into ocular tissue. This paper present here a broad introduction to the stem cell mediated correction of eye ailments and provide extensive references for the interested reader. This paper also looks into the different aspects of using stem cells for drug development for treating eye ailments.

Keywords: optic nerve, drug development, stem cell microenvironment, ocular-lineage differentiation, co-culture techniques, bio-scaffolds, multilineage and self-renewal, tissue regeneration, tissue engineering, stem cell, retina, ocular diseases, eye, Cornea