INTRODUCTION Chemical burns of the eyes are one of the important causes of visual disability. Chemical burns particularly alkali burn may lead to gross limbal stem cell deficiency. Amniotic membrane transplantation with limbal graft is a good method for ocular surface reconstruction. CASE A 39 years male presented to Biratnagar Eye Hospital after 5 months of chemical injury with redness, pain...

BACKGROUND/AIM Amniotic membrane (AM) transplantation effectively expands the remaining limbal epithelial stem cells in patients with partial limbal stem cell deficiency. The authors investigated whether this action could be produced ex vivo. METHODS The outgrowth rate on AM was compared among explants derived from human limbus, peripheral cornea, and central cornea. For outgrowth of human li...

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of prolonged limbal explants cultured without any scaffolds or on amniotic membrane (AM) on the viability, proliferation and differentiation potential of putative phenotypically defined cultured limbal mesenchymal (LMSC) and epithelial stem cells (LESC). METHODS Limbal explants were cultivated on cryopreserved intact AM or plastic plates using medium supplemente...

PURPOSE To determine the expression and function of toll-like receptors (TLRs) in human conjunctival, limbal and corneal epithelial cells. METHODS Expression of TLRs was examined by real-time polymerase chain reaction, immunohistochemistry, and western blot analysis in human conjunctival, corneal and limbal epithelial cells and tissues. Ligand-stimulated nuclear factor kappaB activation; inte...

Anterior segment stem cell technology, due to its already well-defined corneal limbal stem cells with greater ease of evaluation, has been at the forefront of ophthalmic stem cell treatment and technology since 1997. This paper provides an overview of the current standard of care for treatment of limbal stem-cell deficient conditions and reviews recent treatment technologies using ex vivo expan...

The human cornea requires a smooth, transparent, robust and renewable surface to maintain its key optical and protective functions. The corneal epithelium is maintained by a local population of “stem cells”, which although not truly pluripotent, are capable of self-regeneration by asymmetric division. These cells are located at the limbus the region where the conjunctiva-covered sclera meets th...

PURPOSE In the epidermis, the highest clonogenicity, a feature of stem cells (SCs), is found in the smallest keratinocyte. In the limbal-corneal (LC) epithelium the SCs are exclusively localized in the basal epithelial layer of the limbal domain. The current study was conducted to determine whether this spatial SC arrangement is reflected in differences in the cell size between limbal and corne...

background  to report normal variations of the limbal structures using in vivo laser scanning confocal microscopy. methods: this was a retrospective study of fourteen eyes from 11 healthy individuals. confocal imaging of cornea and limbus was performed using heidelberg retina tomograph iii rostock corneal module. results: the typical structure of the palisades of vogt (pov) was detected in 57% ...

Limbal epithelial progenitors are stem cells located in limbal palisades of vogt. In this review, we present the audience with recent evidence that limbal epithelial progenitors may be a powerful stem cell resource for the cure of human corneal stem cell deficiency. Further understanding of their mechanism may shed lights to the future successful application of stem cell therapy not only to the...

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...