Regenerative Medicine in the Cornea

Purpose of Review: Corneal disease affects 12.7 million individuals globally, and the current gold standard therapy using a human donor cornea (HDC) in low-risk patients or keratoprosthesis in high-risk patients is prone to graft rejection. New techniques are currently being investigated to regenerate corneal tissue to provide a more effective treatment for corneal blindness. Recent Findings: Research into corneal regeneration falls broadly into three categories: cell-based therapies using autografts or allografts expanded in culture, material-based therapies that provide fully synthetic scaffolds, and cell-biomaterial composites that combine both strategies. Progress has been made developing tissue-specific solutions and multilayer grafts to target specific types of corneal disease. Summary: All three classes of therapies have shown progress. The recent European approval of “Holoclar” composite autografts and the phase I clinical trials of fully synthetic corneas demonstrate that research in this field is being actively translated into clinical practice. © 2017, Springer Science + Business Media New York.