Beijing Institute of Ophthalmology, Beijing Tongren Eye Center, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences Key Laboratory, Beijing 100730, China.
Beijing Institute of Brain Disorders, Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Disorders, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100069, China.
Biomolecules. 2021 Jul 5;11(7):987. doi: 10.3390/biom11070987.
Glaucoma is a group of irreversible blinding eye diseases characterized by the progressive loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and their axons. Currently, there is no effective method to fundamentally resolve the issue of RGC degeneration. Recent advances have revealed that visual function recovery could be achieved with stem cell-based therapy by replacing damaged RGCs with cell transplantation, providing nutritional factors for damaged RGCs, and supplying healthy mitochondria and other cellular components to exert neuroprotective effects and mediate transdifferentiation of autologous retinal stem cells to accomplish endogenous regeneration of RGC. This article reviews the recent research progress in the above-mentioned fields, including the breakthroughs in the fields of in vivo transdifferentiation of retinal endogenous stem cells and reversal of the RGC aging phenotype, and discusses the obstacles in the clinical translation of the stem cell therapy.
青光眼是一组以视网膜神经节细胞(RGCs)及其轴突进行性丧失为特征的不可逆致盲眼病。目前,尚无根本解决 RGC 变性问题的有效方法。最近的研究进展表明,通过细胞移植替代受损的 RGC,为受损的 RGC 提供营养因子,并提供健康的线粒体和其他细胞成分,干细胞为基础的治疗可能实现视觉功能的恢复,从而发挥神经保护作用,并介导自体视网膜干细胞的转分化,完成 RGC 的内源性再生。本文综述了上述领域的最新研究进展,包括视网膜内源性干细胞体内转分化和 RGC 衰老表型逆转领域的突破,并讨论了干细胞治疗临床转化的障碍。