Reconstruction of Corneal Epithelium Used Human Amniotic Epithelial Cells Transfected with Human Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase Gene

Engineering cornea epithelium surface layer need suitable seed cells. Researchers have found that human amniotic epithelial cells (hAECs), with the characteristics of both embryonic stem cells and pluripotent stem cells, have the potential to differentiate into various tissue cells in particular condition, specially, differentiate to corneal epithelial cells. In addition, it was obtained easily and convenience, with no any ethical arguments. However, the hAECs were difficult to culture because of being terminally differentiated cells and with short duration in vitro, which limited its application in cell therapy. In this study, we constructed successfully the vector pLenti6/V5-DEST-hTERT-EGFP, and obtained the hAECs cells expressed human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) gene by transfecting the vector to hAECs cells. The laminated epithelium and cornea surface layer were re-constructed by using the transfected hAECs cells. The results indicate that the hAECs cells transfected with hTERT gene could be a new seeding cell to construct engineering cornea epithelium surface layer.