Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Treating Ocular Surface Diseases: A Review

Background: Ocular surface diseases represented one of the most common causes of impaired vision or even blindness. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have gained a high interest in cell therapy and regenerative medicine. They are not only readily available, have powerful differentiation capabilities but also present high immunosuppressive properties. They are widely used in allograft owing to their ability to escape from host immune rejection. Clinical trials are underway using MSC for the treatment of a range of diseases not treatable by conventional therapies. Numerous studies have been directed towards the use of MSC for treating corneal defects with very promising outcomes.

Critical Issues: Currently, the diversity in protocols of the isolation and expansion of MSC are hindering the assessment of cell treatment ability and the further development of treatment regimens.

Future Directions: Therefore, future studies should develop international standards for MSC isolation and characterization. Furthermore, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine approaches showed to have promising outcomes for corneal regeneration. Regenerative approaches are divided into two main categories: using direct cell/growth factor delivery or using hydrogel / non-hydrogel-based scaffolds. In this review, we discuss recent advances of MSC and highlight the necessity of further investigations to truly exploit the potential of an MSC-based cell therapy for treating ocular surface diseases.