Discovering the Potential of Dental Pulp Stem Cells for Corneal Endothelial Cell Production: A Proof of Concept.

ABSTRACT: Failure of corneal endothelium cell monolayer is the main cause leading to corneal transplantation. Autologous cell-based therapies are required to reconstruct in vitro the cell monolayer. Several strategies have been proposed using embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, although their use has ethical issues as well as limited clinical applications. For this purpose, we propose the use of dental pulp stem cells isolated from the third molars to form the corneal endothelium cell monolayer. We hypothesize that using dental pulp stem cells that share an embryological origin with corneal endothelial cells, as they both arise from the neural crest, may allow a direct differentiation process avoiding the use of reprogramming techniques, such as induced pluripotent stem c

SUBMITTER: Bosch BM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7876244 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature