Excess caveolin-1 has been reported to play a role in age-dependent hyporesponsiveness to growth factors in vitro. Therefore, we hypothesized that caveolin-1-dependent hyporesponsiveness to growth factors in aged corneal epithelial cells might be responsible for delayed wound healing in vivo. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated corneal wound-healing time by vital staining using fluorescein af...

In the recent years a significant development of investigations with regard to bioavailability of ocular drugs has been noticed. The corneal epithelial barrier is the main pathway for ocular penetration of topically applied ophthalmic drugs into the anterior chamber. To work out an in vitro model of bovine corneal epithelial primary cultures and exercise it for permeability research with lipoph...

Cell surface antigens are important targets for monoclonal antibodies, but they are often difficult to work with due to their association with the cell membrane. Phage display is a versatile technique that can be applied to generate binders against difficult targets. Here we used antibody phage display to isolate a binder for a rare and specialized cell, the human corneal endothelial cell. The ...

PURPOSE Due to its ability to disrupt transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) signaling, halofuginone has been successfully used to treat various fibrotic disorders. Here we investigated the antifibrotic potential of halofuginone in human corneal fibroblasts. METHODS Human corneal fibroblasts were isolated from human donor corneas for in vitro experiments. TGF-β was used to stimulate pro-fibr...

PURPOSE Diabetic corneas overexpress proteinases including matrix metalloproteinase-10 (M10) and cathepsin F (CF). Our purpose was to assess if silencing M10 and CF in organ-cultured diabetic corneas using recombinant adenovirus (rAV)-driven small hairpin RNA (rAV-sh) would normalize slow wound healing, and diabetic and stem cell marker expression. METHODS Sixteen pairs of organ-cultured auto...

PURPOSE To determine the expression of differentiation and progenitor cell markers in corneal tissues that previously underwent autologous cultivated oral mucosal epithelial transplantation (COMET). METHODS Four eyes from three alkaline-injured patients and one thermally injured patient underwent COMET to promote re-epithelialization or corneal reconstruction. Between 10 and 22 months (mean, ...

Nerve growth factor (NGF), a member of the neurotrophin family, has been identified as an essential growth factor supporting stem cell self-renewal outside the nervous system and was previously shown to stimulate corneal epithelial proliferation both in vivo and in vitro. In this study, we evaluated the expression of NGF and its corresponding receptors in the human corneal and limbal tissues, a...

Consistent expansion of human corneal endothelial cells (hCECs) is critical in the development of tissue engineered endothelial constructs. However, a wide range of complex culture media, developed from different basal media have been reported in the propagation of hCECs, some with more success than others. These results are further confounded by donor-to-donor variability. The aim of this stud...

PURPOSE To isolate multipotent precursors from the rabbit corneal stroma and to compare the distribution and proliferative capacity of keratocyte precursors obtained from the central and peripheral regions of the corneal stroma. METHODS The rabbit corneal stroma was divided into a peripheral region (6.0-10.0 mm in diameter) and a central region (6.0 mm in diameter). A sphere-forming assay was...

PURPOSE Corneal astigmatism is a common eye disorder characterized by irregularities in corneal curvature. Recently, the rs7677751 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at the platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRA) locus was found to be associated with corneal astigmatism in people of Asian ancestry. In the present study, we sought to replicate this finding and identify other gen...