stem cells are the cells having some distinguishing characteristics like longevity, high capacity of self-renewal and differentiation, quiescence and highly error-free proliferation. almost all stem cells have the potential of lineage reprogramming, i.e. inter-conversion of cell lineages. they also have the potential to differentiate into almost all kinds of cells. these cells have been found i...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The ocular surface is an ideal region to study the epithelial stem cell (SC) biology because of the unique spatial arrangement of stem cells and transient amplifying cells. A major challenge in corneal SC biology is the ability to identify SC in vitro and in situ, and one of the major controversies in the field relates to reliable SC markers. This study was carried out t...

Corneal epithelium is a self-renewing tissue. Recent studies indicate that corneal epithelial stem cells reside preferentially in the basal layer of peripheral cornea in the limbal zone, rather than uniformly in the entire corneal epithelium. This idea is supported by a unique limbal/corneal expression pattern of the K3 keratin marker for corneal-type differentiation; the preferential distribut...

Stem cells are present in all self-reviewing tissues and have unique properties. The ocular surface is made up of two distinct types of epithelial cells, constituting the conjunctival and the corneal epithelia. These epithelia are stratified, squamous and non-keratinized. Although anatomically continuous with each other at the corneoscleral limbus, the two cell phenotypes represent quite distin...

Ex vivo culture of human limbal epithelial cells (LECs) is used to treat limbal stem cell (LSC) deficiency, a vision loss condition, and suitable culture systems using feeder cells or serum without animal elements have been developed. This study evaluated the use of human umbilical cord or placenta mesenchymal stem cells (C-MSCs or P-MSCs, resp.) as feeder cells in an animal/serum-free cocultur...

A simple, reproducible, animal-material free method for cultivating and characterizing cornea limbal epithelial stem cells (LESCs) on human lens capsule (LC) was developed for future clinical transplantation. The limbal tissue explants (2 × 2 × 0.25 mm) were harvested from 77 cadavers and expanded ex vivo on either cell culture plates or LC in medium containing human serum as the only growth su...

PURPOSE To discuss the importance of ocular surface management in corneal transplantation, especially in limbal transplantation. METHODS Since the corneal epithelium is not completely recovered after corneal transplantation, meticulous attention should be paid to the ocular surface to prevent infection and rejection, which are the major causes of corneal transplantation failure. Preoperative ...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare recurrence rates upon using mitomycin C (MMC) with limbal-conjunctival autograft for treating recurrent pterygia. METHODOLOGY An interventional, prospective, comparative clinical study was performed in 30 eyes (26 patients) with recurrent pterygia, allocated into two groups: Group A (19 eyes) operated by pterygium excision and limba...